


Dead Man Walking

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Cobra (TV 2019), Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Politics, Sutherland is confused and naked and has a headache, botched assassination, dark humour, eventual background sea devil now arriving in chapter three, sutheracey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 09:01:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22393348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Prime Ministers don’t normally wake up in morgues after they’ve been murdered, but that’s exactly what Robert Sutherland has just done. Right in front of Lacey’s nose. With limited resources and not knowing who to trust, Sutherland and Lacey must work together to get to the bottom of the attempted assassination.Based loosely onthis dream I had.
Relationships: Lacey (Once Upon a Time)/Robert Sutherland (Cobra)
Comments: 104
Kudos: 37





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: The rating will go up in later chapters. 
> 
> So, this is meant to be ‘darkly humorous and amusing mystery’ rather than ‘gripping political thriller’, and whilst I’ve tried to make it as believable as possible, it’s not a super-accurate portrayal of the British medico-legal process. With that in mind, I really, really hope that you enjoy it. Many thanks to @ripperblackstaff for giving it the thumbs up.

Lacey had always liked the morgue.

It was not out of any morbid fascination with death or fixation with corpses. The death seemed secondary to her. For her, the morgue was first and foremost a peaceful place. It was always cold, and when she was in there, it was always blissfully quiet. She knew it wasn’t always so quiet, with all the tools used to perform post-mortem exams, but she was never there when it was working. She was only ever there when it was quiet, when the dead were resting, safe in the pathologist’s hands until he let them go, on to the next leg of their journey.

Even from a young age, it had never held any fear for her. For as long as she could remember, her father had been bringing her to his place of work. She’d never been scared of death or dead bodies. It was just the next part of life.

She knew that she really shouldn’t be here, but she’d been doing her homework in her dad’s office ever since she’d started high school, and now that she was studying for her PhD, it was still the place that she focussed best. The cold kept her sharp, and the quiet helped her focus. Her dad and his colleagues had always turned a blind eye to her presence – as long as she stayed in the office, and as long as she left when they were performing autopsies in the main morgue, she was welcome, and they let her sneak in and out.

Lacey pulled her feet up under her, sitting cross-legged in her dad’s chair and listening to the squeak as she spun it back and forth, shifting her weight. She wondered when he was going to come back and turn her out. Beyond the glass double doors in the main morgue, the post-mortem table was set up with someone on it, covered in a sheet and ready to go.

It was nowhere near the first time she’d seen such a sight, but there was definitely something different about this one. They had been brought in with such hurry and ceremony. Lacey had been in the office when the body had come in, and she’d hid under the desk so as not to miss all the action – because it was most definitely high profile. First, Dad had been instructed to get going on it straight away. The police needed cause of death as quickly as possible, and Lacey wondered if she was looking at a murder victim.

Then, just as he’d been about to get started and he’d been shooing Lacey out of the office, he’d been called out by some very official looking people and it seemed like they’d been delaying him ever since, waiting for official consent from various different sources.

Lacey could have gone home hours ago, but something had kept her here, something aside from the atmosphere that made her so productive. She’d long since finished all her work, but she felt a certain protectiveness towards whoever it was under that sheet. With all the to-ing and fro-ing and hullaballoo going on around them, she felt that they needed someone to advocate for them and watch over them.

Lacey snorted to herself at the sentiment. Being the daughter of a forensic pathologist and being so comfortable around death, she had always been the odd one out at school, and in her teen years and all through university, she had tried as hard as possible to distance herself from the stereotype of the Goth Girl Obsessed With Death.

She’d never been _obsessed_ with it, but as soon as people heard what her dad did for a living, they immediately assumed she was either traumatised because of it, or ought to be only dressing in black and talking to skulls and pet ravens. She’d worked hard to disabuse people of that notion and yet here she was, years later, sitting in her dad’s office at stupid o’clock in the morning because she wanted to guard a dead person’s dignity.

The operative word there, she felt, was _person_. They might be dead, but they were still _someone_, and likely someone important.

Lacey put her headphones on and closed her eyes, leaning back in her chair. She always knew that she’d end up following in her father’s footsteps sooner or later. She’d flunked out of medical school after three years, decided that she wanted to get as far away from dead bodies as possible for a while, and then finally returned to her roots, knowing that she would never truly be able to get away from it, nor did she want to. It had taken her a long time to get to where she was, but her forensic chemistry doctorate was so close she could taste it, and…

Lacey’s eyes shot open as there was an almighty crash from the morgue.

The deceased was no longer on the post-mortem table. The deceased was now on the floor, tangled up in the sheet, coughing and gasping for breath. The crash had been Dad’s equipment trolley being thrown over as the now-very-much-alive man had woken up, sat up, found himself under a sheet in a morgue and no doubt panicked, ending with him falling off the table.

Lacey threw her headphones down onto the desk and rushed into the morgue.

“Are you all right?”

It was a ridiculous question to ask someone who’d been dead thirty seconds ago, but it was the only thing that came into her head.

“Wonderful.” The reply would have been an impressive snarl if it had not been so weak in voice and hadn’t been cut off with another coughing fit. “Fuck.”

Cautiously, Lacey moved around the table, and she stopped short on seeing the identity of the very-not-dead man who was tentatively getting to his feet. All she could do was stare.

The very-not-dead man stared back.

Finally, words returned.

“You’re the Prime Minister!” Lacey managed.

The Prime Minister nodded. “Yes.”

“You’re naked!”

“Yes.” He grabbed the sheet he’d previously been covered in and attempted to preserve what little was left of his dignity. Despite the utter absurdity of the situation making her think that perhaps she’d nodded off in the office after all, Lacey couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed by this, and feeling equally worried that she was not at all disappointed by the Prime Minister’s bare arse. “Now, could you please help the naked prime minister out by giving his clothes back and telling him why the fuck he’s in a morgue?”

“You’re dead,” Lacey said. “Well, you were dead until about two minutes ago. You’re lucky; if it hadn’t been for the intervention of the men in suits, Dad would have opened you up hours ago.”

“Dead… Men in suits… Dad… Fuck…” He rubbed his forehead with the hand not holding up the sheet.

“Yeah.” Lacey nodded. “Yeah, I’d say ‘fuck’ just about sums it up.”

He coughed again, thick and wet, and Lacey rushed forward to stop him falling over again.

“I think you’d better sit down.” There was nowhere in the morgue to sit down, so she helped him over to the office and got him into the chair she’d just vacated. It was rather slow progress, getting tangled up in the sheet at various intervals, but they made it, and Lacey stood back, trying to look like she knew what she was doing. Fake it till you make it had worked for her for this long. Might as well try and bluff the Prime Minister whilst she was at it.

She got him a glass of water and leaned against the desk as he sipped it.

“Who are you?” he asked eventually.

“Lacey French.” She held out a hand. “Almost a fully-qualified forensic chemist.”

The Prime Minister looked her up and down. “You don’t seem like the type to work in a morgue.”

“Well, I don’t, technically. My dad works here, he’s the pathologist. I just… use his office occasionally.”

“So, you’re supposed to be here about as much as I’m supposed to be here.” Sutherland snorted. “Well, that figures. Look, can you please find my fucking clothes?”

As entertaining as it would no doubt have been to continue the conversation whilst he was only wearing a sheet, Lacey could sympathise with the poor man’s plight, even if she was worried that if she left the room, he’d turn out to have been a hallucination.

She was also worried that if she left the room, she’d come back to find that the men in suits had spirited him away somewhere. She wasn’t almost a forensic scientist and the daughter of a pathologist for nothing. She had a sense about these things. There was something very suspicious going on, and she had the distinct feeling that if she wasn’t careful, the Prime Minister would end up on the table for real – and this time he wouldn’t be waking up again.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “Just stay here.”

She left the office and rushed into the storage room next door where the deceased’s personal effects were kept. They weren’t usually kept very long – either they’d died here in the hospital and the family had already taken them, or they’d been sent to the labs for forensic testing. With all the kerfuffle surrounding Sutherland coming into the morgue and the delay in his post-mortem, Lacey hoped that his things would still be here, but she came up short.

Maybe Dad would know where they were – if she could find him. Maybe the men in suits had them. Maybe she ought to cut her losses and tell someone that the Prime Minister wasn’t actually dead.

Something stopped her from going ahead with that last option, though. The cold idea of murder was still sitting firmly at the front of her brain, and she didn’t really know who she ought to trust in this matter. Gut instinct was telling her that she ought to keep this discovery to herself.

Lacey left the storage room and ran along the corridors in search of her father. Hopefully he’d be in the staff canteen and the men in suits hadn’t done anything terrible to him to stop him from doing the post-mortem.

She breathed a huge sigh of relief when she saw him in there, and she walked over as calmly as possible, trying not to look like she was carrying the world’s biggest secret, namely that the Prime Minister was currently alive and sitting in the morgue office.

“Hi Dad.” She slid into the seat opposite him.

“Hello, Lace. Are you still here? I thought you’d have gone hours ago.”

“Yes, well, I was keeping the Prime Minister company.”

“Lace!” Moe leaned in close. “No one’s supposed to know it’s him! It hasn’t been announced to the general public yet! How did you know? Don’t tell me you’ve been sneaking peeks under my sheets.”

“Dad, you’ve known me long enough to know I’d never do that. All the attention, the men in suits who look like undercover cops, the urgency and then the delay, the fact this is the nearest hospital to Chequers… It wasn’t too hard to put two and two together.”

“Right.” Moe shook his head. “I hope they give me the go ahead soon; I’ll have to find somewhere for him to stay overnight if they take any longer coming through with all the approvals they need. I clock off in an hour. It’s something to do with the Cabinet Office needing to give consent for the post-mortem. I don’t know, I’ve never come across anything like this before in thirty years of pathology.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t worry too much about him going off overnight,” Lacey murmured. “Look, Dad, what happened to his effects?”

“Interesting you should mention that. The police asked for them to go to forensics, so I sent them to forensics. The man in the grey suit who seems to think he owns the place was livid when I told him.”

“Right. Thanks.” Damn. Now she had a very alive and very naked Prime Minister on her hands for the foreseeable future.

“Wait, Lace, what’s going on? Where are you going?”

Lacey didn’t stop to answer. She careened back out of the canteen towards the morgue, diving into a laundry cupboard on the way and grabbing a set of scrubs in what she thought ought to be the right size.

Sutherland was still waiting for her in the office when she returned. She’d been surprised not to bump into any of the men in suits on her way, but if they were more concerned with keeping her dad busy, then they might not have put a round-the-clock watch on the morgue.

The Prime Minister was supposed to be dead, after all, and no one else knew this. He wasn’t likely to be going anywhere.

She held out the scrubs to him. “Your clothes went to forensics.”

Sutherland sighed. “Fan-fucking-tastic. I suppose I should be grateful that they’re treating my death as suspicious.” He looked at her pointedly. “Do you mind?”

Lacey grinned. “Not at all.”

Sutherland sighed. “Ask a stupid question and you’ll get a stupid answer, I suppose. I thought forensic scientists were supposed to respect the dead?”

“I have the utmost respect for the dead, Mr Sutherland. I have less respect for the living.” Nonetheless, she turned her back to allow him to get dressed.

The scrubs turned out to be a bit big, but they were better than a sheet, and Sutherland looked around the small office before giving voice to the exact same thought that was going through Lacey’s own head.

“What the fuck are we supposed to do now?”


	2. Chapter 2

Robert Sutherland was not having a good day.

The last thing he remembered was trying very hard to stay awake. He had been in his office in Chequers, attempting to look over the latest proposals from the Foreign Office regarding a potential delicate trade crisis that had only come onto their radar as Parliament had been breaking up for summer. Not wanting to cause a panic by recalling Parliament, he’d decided to just host a few meetings at Chequers to try and get ahead of the game before everything started up again later in the year.

Now he was thinking that probably hadn’t been such a good idea, since instead of waking up in his office where he had failed in his fight against oncoming exhaustion despite the copious amounts of coffee he’d been drinking, he had woken up in a morgue. God only knew where. On an autopsy table. With no clothes on.

He tried to count his blessings. At least he hadn’t woken up in one of the fridge drawers.

That was pretty much the only blessing he could think of right now, because his head was pounding, and the young woman who’d rescued him wasn’t letting him have any painkillers. He wasn’t sure if rescued was the right word for it.

“Think about it,” she was saying as she searched through the morgue office’s drawers and filing cabinets for something, muttering under her breath about her father not keeping anything in a logical place. “You were dead. A doctor declared you dead and you were about to be autopsied so that they could determine the cause of death. Then some official looking men in suits – maybe MI5, I don’t know – started delaying the autopsy. Why would they do that? You’re the Prime Minister. You’re pretty much the most important man in the country. They would want to know how you died asap so that they can announce to the country at large that you’re dead and parliament can start performing damage limitation and everyone who hates you can start partying in the streets.”

“You are not helping at all,” Sutherland growled.

“Just stating a fact. Anyway. They keep delaying the autopsy, the police are convinced your death was suspicious and the Suits were livid when Dad sent your clothes for forensics.” Lacey shrugged. “They’re trying to cover up the fact that your death was suspicious. You didn’t die, Prime Minister. You were murdered. Only, whoever murdered you didn’t quite succeed. And since you have no markings of a violent death…”

Sutherland did not need to be reminded that Lacey had seen him completely starkers.

“…Then that leads me to believe that you’ve been poisoned. With something that would make it look like a natural death, a heart attack or something. And the Suits, who are likely working for whoever poisoned you, want to delay the autopsy so that whatever it was that was used to poison you has had time to break down and won’t show up as anything suspicious on the toxicology report.”

Lacey slammed the final drawer shut and cursed under her breath before going out into the main morgue, telling Sutherland in no uncertain terms not to wander off. Sutherland had no idea where he’d wander off to in the first place; someone would probably find him traipsing the corridors in search of an exit and assume that he’d escaped from a secure ward, and if he told them that he was the Prime Minister, then he’d simply be branded as delusional.

Lacey returned, triumphant, holding up a sterile syringe still in its wrapper, and a couple of test tubes.

Sutherland edged his chair away from her.

“No.”

Lacey rolled her eyes. “I did three years at medical school and I’m in my sixth of studying forensic chemistry. I have taken blood before, you’re in safe hands.”

“No!”

“Look, do you want to find out what killed you or not? If we don’t do it soon then it’ll have broken down in your bloodstream and there’ll be no evidence.”

“I want to get the fuck out of here!”

“Yeah, well…” Lacey let out a heavy sigh, leaning back on the desk. “Look, I’m trying to help here, ok? I could just as easily throw you to the wolves in Suits out there and see how you get on then. I didn’t ask to be saddled with a not-dead Prime Minister whose party I didn’t even vote for. I have even less idea who I ought to trust than you do! Anyway, no painkillers until we work out what poisoned you. I don’t want to re-poison you by giving you something that’ll react to whatever it was that you were given before and I don’t want the painkillers to mask whatever it might have been so that we can’t work out what it was in the first place.”

Sutherland sighed, rubbing his forehead and willing the pain to go away. They were stuck in a stalemate, but at least Lacey did seem to have his best interests at heart, even if her bedside manner left a little to be desired. Maybe it was a good thing that she hadn’t finished medical school.

Still, he was as morbidly intrigued to know how he’d been unsuccessfully assassinated as Lacey seemed to be, and it made sense to get evidence against his would-be killer whilst he could. Against every better judgement that was currently screaming at him, he held out his arm.

“Very good. I knew you’d see reason in the end. If only you could see reason about that student loan forgiveness.”

To give her credit where it was due, she was very professional about the whole thing, washing her hands thoroughly and putting on gloves before swabbing his arm with disinfectant.

“Now, because they’re usually getting blood out of people without pulses down here, there are no tourniquets, so we’ll have to make do.” Lacey pinged an elastic band around his arm and twisted it to make the veins in his elbow bulge. “Hold that and make a fist.”

Sutherland did as he was told, mainly because Lacey was now holding a hypodermic and he didn’t want it being jabbed anywhere that it shouldn’t be.

“OK. Look away now if you’re squeamish. Sharp scratch.”

Within a few seconds, Lacey had filled two test tubes and was releasing her makeshift tourniquet, pressing cotton wool down on Sutherland’s elbow as her other hand searched for plasters before giving it up as a bad job.

“So, now that you’ve drained me dry, what next?” he asked.

“Well, someone needs to do a toxicology report on these samples,” Lacey said. “I’m slightly too invested in the case to do it myself. I mean, someone has to keep you alive now that you’re, well, alive. Also, amazing as I am, I’m not fully qualified so anything I do probably wouldn’t stand up in court. But we’re in luck, because we are in fact in a hospital and I happen to know a lot of pathologists here.”

She grabbed her phone before Sutherland could protest, hitting a speed dial.

“Hi Dorothy! You know you owe me a massive favour for setting you up with that cute nurse from A&E? Yes, well, I’m cashing it in now.”

Sutherland zoned out as she talked, trying to remember something, anything that could have any bearing on the case. Everything was so fuzzy, but he couldn’t remember anything out of the ordinary.

If he had been poisoned, then it had been by someone close to him. There had been so few people around and they were all known to him personally. The thought was chilling, and he wished that he knew who he could trust. It was a horrible feeling, metaphorically looking over his shoulder all the time. Politics involved a lot of backstabbing, he’d been in the business of it long enough to know that, but at the same time, he never thought that anyone meant it quite that literally.

It was probably the coffee. He’d been drinking a lot of it and he’d forgotten dinner, so intent had he in his forceful mission to get everything solved before it dragged on too far into the summer recess.

Sutherland began to feel slightly queasy.

“Are you all right?” Lacey was off the phone, stowing the blood samples in her rucksack. “Come on, let’s get out of here before one of the Suits comes back and finds that you’re not dead after all. Or my dad comes back and tries to autopsy you anyway.”

Sutherland took a deep breath. “I need to call someone.”

Lacey raised an eyebrow. “All things considered, are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“All things considered, we’re a dead prime minister and an almost-forensic chemist hiding in a morgue we’re not supposed to be in. I think back-up might be useful.”

“Ok, ok, I get your point, and I suppose I did just bring Dorothy into it. Who are you going to call?”

“Carrie, my chief of staff.”

“You trust her?”

“With my life.”

Lacey snorted. “Well, given the circumstances, you’d better.”

X

Moe had finally finished signing all the waivers, and the man in the grey suit with the grey hair whom all the other Suits were calling Sir had basically told him that if he broke any of the top secret agreements he’d just signed, he’d be locked up and the key thrown away and no-one would ever know where the body was buried.

He’d also told him that if anything ‘unusual’ were to crop up during the autopsy, then he should tell the Grey Suit Sir and no one else. It should not go on the autopsy report.

Moe valued his life and freedom too much to disagree. He was already in trouble for sending the PM’s effects to the police without leave from Grey Suit Sir.

Now, his shift was over and they still hadn’t given him the go ahead, so he had informed the Suits in no uncertain terms that he was going to have to go and put the Prime Minister away until he came back on shift now, because otherwise they’d have to go through the entire rigmarole again with another pathologist.

The Suits had actually seemed rather relieved about that, and Moe’s suspicions of them were growing by the minute. Still, he kept his mouth shut, and he didn’t complain when one of them accompanied him down to the morgue.

That was when things started to go pear-shaped. Because the morgue was empty.

Not only was Lacey no longer in the office, the Prime Minister was no longer on the table.

The Suit looked at Moe with a look that was slightly anger, but mostly fear. A kind of ‘oh crap, I’m so fired’ expression.

“Where’s he gone?” he asked.

Moe shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been under observation ever since he arrived. Maybe he snuck out whilst I was in the canteen and you were chatting up that nurse in the purple scrubs.”

The Suit scrubbed a hand over his face. “This is impossible! He was dead! He can’t have snuck out anywhere! He must have had help! I mean, someone must have stolen him.”

Moe just shrugged again, collecting his coat from the morgue office and surreptitiously sliding Lacey’s discarded headphones into his pocket before the distraught Suit could see them.

“Well, if you’d let me get going on his autopsy sooner, we wouldn’t have this problem,” he said calmly, although he was feeling anything but calm. Someone had stolen the Prime Minister, and it was looking very likely that the someone was his own daughter.

He thought back to the brief conversation that he’d had with her in the canteen whilst the Suit had been distracted by the purple scrubs. About how he didn’t need to worry about the PM going off overnight. And asking where his effects were. And Lacey had been in the morgue the entire night, unbeknownst to the Suits.

Moe was beginning to think that the Prime Minister wasn’t actually dead after all, and he really wasn’t sure whether that was supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing.


	3. Chapter 3

Something was wrong. Carrie had known that something was wrong from the moment that the Head of the Civil Service had told her to go home. He had told her in forceful and no uncertain terms to go home, and not to come back until he called her. 

Now that Robert was… gone, Sir Albert Spencer, Head of the Civil Service, was her de facto boss, so she couldn’t really contradict him.

She hadn’t really focussed on the fact that something was wrong at the time, because at the time, she had just found the Prime Minister dead in his private office in Chequers and had been through all the necessary trauma of calling the police and the ambulance and making statements and officially identifying the body and watching her boss being taken away covered in a sheet.

She had settled in for a long night of enforcing a complete press blackout until cause of death could be determined, and of enacting several antiquated procedures related to ‘what happens when a Prime Minister dies in office’ that no one had needed to enact since 1812. 

Ironically, the last Prime Minister to die in office was also the first and only to be assassinated. 

Carrie seriously suspected that he was not in fact the only one. 

She seriously suspected that Sir Albert knew something, and that was the reason why she, ostensibly the closest person to the Prime Minister, had been pretty much forcibly removed from Chequers and told to go home, that there was nothing she could do, that she’d had a traumatic evening and everyone else would take care of things. 

Carrie sighed, continuing to stare at the chintzy floral wallpaper of her mother’s living room and wondering if the decision to start drinking as soon as she’d got home was a good one. Having been told to go home, Carrie had pointed out that, whilst the Prime Minister was away from London and she was with him, Chequers _was_ her home, Sir Albert had politely reminded her that her mother lived not ten miles away from Chequers, and gave her a pointed look that told her, without the need for words, where he expected her to go.

Her mother, owner of a house in a small village in the middle of nowhere, had found her outside the house, crying her eyes out with angry tears of loss and frustration as she kicked the garden wall to within an inch of the stonework’s life. 

She’d steered her inside, given her some elderflower wine to calm her down, and, Official Secrets Act be damned, had listened to Carrie pour out all her woes. To her credit, Mrs de Ville had not batted an eyelid at the fact that the Prime Minister had died of a suspected heart attack, and she had just kept topping up her daughter’s glass. Carrie raised an eyebrow as the drink kept flowing. At least she knew where she got it from. 

They’d moved on from elderflower wine onto gin now, and it was now getting on for one in the morning. Mrs de Ville was snoring gently in her chair, and Carrie’s thoughts were coming full circle. Something was wrong. There was no way Robert had had a heart attack.

Yes, he was a smoker, and yes, he was under a lot of stress, but he’d been in good health lately, and there had been nothing wrong with him all day. Surely he’d show some kind of symptoms of impending doom.

This wasn’t supposed to have happened. This was supposed to her holiday, for fuck’s sake. Parliament wasn’t in session; everything was winding down for the summer. There had just been a couple of meetings about more sensitive policy matters for the next session that Robert had said couldn’t wait - so they’d arranged for a few private meetings at Chequers to go over it. Carrie had come down to be on hand if he needed her. Which, all things considered when it came to Robert losing his temper and threatening to do something stupid, was rather likely.

“Someone killed him,” she muttered darkly to the wallpaper.

The chilling thought was that the pool of suspects was incredibly small, given how few people were around. It was someone in the Cabinet, or the Civil Service, or the Chequers staff. 

Carrie shook her head. She was getting paranoid. It was the wine. And the gin probably hadn’t helped either. He’d had a heart attack, it was terribly tragic, and half the public would mourn, and the other half would rejoice when they found out, and that was the way of it. 

Except for the Head of the Civil Service locking her out of the proceedings. She couldn’t get those suspicions out of her head. 

“Who killed who, darling?” Mrs de Ville jerked awake. “I do love a good murder. I always fancied myself as a Miss Marple, but our village is nowhere near as prone to death as St Mary Mead.”

“Someone killed the Prime Minister.”

“Oh yes, that.” Mrs de Ville held up the wine bottle - nowhere near the first they’d got through - and found it empty. “Well, why don’t you do a little investigation? With your connections, you should be in a perfect position to find things out.”

She wasn’t, though. She was sitting in her mother’s living room whilst the Head of the Civil Service tried very hard to keep her from finding anything out. 

For the first time in her life, Carrie was actually beginning to wish that she hadn’t drunk so much. 

Her phone began to ring, pulling her out of her morbid contemplation. She grabbed it excitedly, convinced that it would be Sir Albert calling her to bring her back into the fold (although how much use she’d be after a bottle and a half of wine was debatable), and she was brought up short when the number showed as unknown; a comparatively local landline number.

Maybe the press had already got wind of what had happened and were calling her for a statement. Admittedly, one in the morning was an odd time for it, but Carrie had long since learned after a lifetime in politics that journalism never slept.

The phone continued to ring, and finally, she answered.

“Hello?”

_“Carrie, it’s me.”_

“What?” Carrie was very glad that she was already sitting down because she would most certainly have fallen over had she not been.

_“It’s me, Carrie! For fuck’s sake!”_ Robert certainly sounded like himself, and certainly sounded alive, and Carrie was really beginning to wish that she hadn’t drunk so much because her brain was operating at a speed slower than a snail wading through treacle.

“But you’re dead!” she hissed. “I saw you. You were dead. Very dead.”

_“Well, evidently not quite as dead as everyone thought.”_

“What, how… Where are you?”

_“I’m still in the morgue.”_

“You’re calling me from the morgue?”

_“Yes.”_

“How?”

_“With a phone! Carrie… Have you been drinking?”_

“Of course I’ve been drinking, you walnut! My boss just died, I just got put on indefinite garden leave, and I’ve been drowning my sorrows in elderflower wine for the last four hours!”

_“Bloody hell, you must be desperate. Elderflower wine? Never mind. Look, I need your help; you’re the only person I trust.”_

“I…” Carrie remembered her own conviction that Robert had been murdered and took his point. “Yes. All right. What do you need?”

_“To find out who tried to kill me, that would be a good start. And getting out of this place would be good. And some aspirin. So far my only partner in crime is a trainee forensic scientist who isn’t even supposed to be here and who seems worryingly interested in my arse.”_

Carrie could just about make out a young, female voice in the background of the call. _“Your arse is very interesting.”_

“You know, I have to agree with the trainee forensic scientist who isn’t even supposed to be there.”

_“You’re drunk, Carrie. Look…” _There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the line. “_I really, really need you right now.”_

Carrie nodded despite the fact he couldn’t see her. “Yes. Ok. I’ll be there. Where are you? I mean, apart from the morgue.”

_“Stoke Mandeville hospital,”_ said the almost-forensic scientist.

“Ok. Just…” Carrie had no idea what kind of advice to offer a man who’d just risen from the dead and was hiding in a morgue. “Just… hang in there.”

_“I’ll try.”_

“I’ll see you as soon as I can. Oh, and Robert?”

_“Yes?”_

“I’m so glad that you’re alive.”

The call ended. Carrie was suddenly painfully and horribly sober, and she jumped up out of the squashy armchair she’d been ensconced in ever since her mother had levered her away from the garden wall before she could kick it down. The suddenness of the action alarmed Mrs de Ville.

“Where are you going, darling?”

“Stoke Mandeville. Robert’s alive and stuck in a morgue and I have to go and get him out and work out who tried to kill him and…”

She fumbled for her car keys, and Mrs de Ville came over, closing her wrinkled hands over Carrie’s shaking ones.

“Darling, I’m not going to be responsible for you ending up in the hospital you’re trying to get to. We’ll get a taxi.”

“We?”

“Well, naturally I’m coming with you. You can’t exactly trust anyone else in this game, and you’re going to need all the help you can get on this one. I just finished the latest Kathy Reichs; we’ll make the perfect team.”

Carrie was not altogether convinced, but her mother was right. She was going to need some help, and none of her usual channels would be available to her, especially if Sir Albert was running interference. It wasn’t like anyone would suspect a seemingly harmless septuagenarian; maybe she could help out with bluffing Carrie’s way into the hospital.

Ten minutes later found Carrie and her mother sitting in the back of a taxi on their way to Stoke Mandeville. The driver, an incredibly cynical woman named Ursula, had raised an eyebrow at their destination and suggested calling an ambulance instead, until Carrie had reassured her that neither she nor her mother were in need of medical attention.

Ursula had not seemed entirely convinced by this, especially since Mrs de Ville was swaying slightly, but had nonetheless begun the drive to the hospital. At this time of the night the roads were empty, and they made good time. It was only once they were nearing the carpark that Carrie realised they’d hit a major snag. Namely, she had no idea where the morgue was in relation to anywhere else in the hospital.

Also, if she was going to be sneaking the supposedly dead Prime Minister out of the hospital, taking him out through the main entrance probably wouldn’t be a good idea. If the press didn’t know that something odd had happened in the upper echelons of government before, then they certainly would after that.

“Can you just go round the block a bit and park up in a side street?” she asked.

Ursula raised her eyebrows in the rear-view mirror.

“Are you mad? There’s nowhere to park within about a mile of the place.”

“You can leave the meter running,” Carrie said. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

“Listen, madam, I don’t know what you’re doing, calling taxis in the middle of the night to take you to hospitals that you evidently want to get into furtively, but I am not partaking in any criminal activity. Once I drop you off, I’m out of here.”

“No! Please, we’ll need to go back again. And I promise that there is nothing illegal going on.”

Carrie knew that she probably didn’t sound all that convincing, but at the same time, she was desperate to get Robert out of the morgue and into somewhere safe, and right now this taxi was the only safe harbour she had.

Ursula heaved a sigh. “All right. There’s a little alley parallel to the ambulance station; there’s usually space in there and you can try and sneak in via Resus. But you pay for this journey now; I’m not going to hang around indefinitely.”

“You are a lifesaver. Quite possibly literally.” Carrie blew her a kiss from the back seat and Ursula rolled her eyes, but Carrie caught the slightest hint of a smile in the mirror.

The taxi pulled up and Carrie counted out change plus a generous tip, praying that Ursula would still be there when they got back. She considered leaving her mother in the car as insurance, but Mrs de Ville was already out of the taxi and scuttling towards the Resus entrance.

Carrie had never seen her mother scuttle before. Maddie de Ville had always been poised and dignified, and for a few moments all Carrie could do was stare in bewilderment, finally putting it down to the drink and following her as furtively as she could manage with that much elderflower wine inside her.

Quite how they managed to get inside without anyone noticing that anything was amiss would be a source of amazement to Carrie for the rest of her days, but they managed to make it out of A&E by refuge of sheer audacity and acting like they were definitely supposed to be there.

Now all they had to do was make it to the morgue.

“I think it’s this way.” Mrs de Ville was studying the hospital map on the wall intently. The morgue was not marked, but she tapped one long, red fingernail at the stairwell. “They’re usually in the basement.”

It was as good a place to start looking as any, and Carrie followed her mother towards the stairs, striding along the basement corridors with a confidence that neither of them felt but that would hopefully stop anyone from questioning them.

They had stopped to look at another map when they heard it.

“Pst!”

Carrie glanced over her shoulder. A young woman was leaning out of an unmarked doorway.

“Carrie de Ville?” she asked.

Carrie nodded once, uncertainly.

“Great. I’m Lacey French, almost-forensic scientist. I’ve got something of yours here.”

Carrie crossed the corridor and peered into the room – it turned out to be a linen closet – past Lacey.

Robert was there. He was looking rather worse for wear, but then, he had just been murdered so that was probably forgivable. Carrie knew that she wouldn’t be looking much better herself and she didn’t even have the excuse of waking up in a morgue.

“Robert!”

She pushed past Lacey and threw her arms around him. “Oh, darling, I’m so glad that you’re all right!”

Robert gave a weak laugh. “It’s good to see you too, Carrie.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here. There’s a taxi waiting.”

“Thank God for that,” said Lacey. “I really didn’t want to have to take him on the back of my moped. Let’s roll. Keep an eye out for Suits, the place is crawling with them.”

She led the way out of the linen closet and along the corridor, and Carrie, Robert and Mrs de Ville rushed to keep up with her.

Carrie had to smile, despite everything that was going on. She’d never met anyone less likely to be a forensic scientist, and anyone less likely to have helped the Prime Minister in his hour of need.

She felt that she was going to like Lacey French.


	4. Chapter 4

Lacey’s night just kept getting stranger. Having delivered the Prime Minister safely into the hands of his Chief of Staff, who, although at least three sheets to the wind and probably closer to four, did at least seem capable, she should have just left them to it.

She should have just got them out of the hospital, waved them cheerily away with a cry of ‘good luck, don’t nearly get assassinated again’ and gone home. It was almost two o’clock in the morning, for heaven’s sake, she had better places to be than skulking down alleyways beside the ambulance station. Like bed, for instance.

But no. Here she was, skulking down an alleyway with the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister’s drunk Chief of Staff, and the Prime Minister’s drunk Chief of Staff’s equally drunk mother, for whose presence no one had a satisfactory explanation.

There was a taxi waiting in the shadows and Lacey nearly jumped out of her skin when the lights came on, half-convinced that the secret service had caught them, and they were all about to be thrown in jail for absconding with a supposedly dead body.

These fears were immediately allayed by the taxi driver sticking her head out of the window wearing an incredulous expression.

“Did you two just kidnap the Prime Minister?” she whispered, in as close to a shout of alarm as a whisper could ever get. “I told you I wasn’t getting involved in any illegal activity! You put him back where you found him right now or I’m turning this car around!”

“We’re not kidnapping him, we’re rescuing him,” Carrie said patiently. “And considering we found him in the morgue, we’d really rather not put him back there if it’s all the same to you.”

“Well, technically we found him in a linen closet,” Mrs de Ville pointed out. “Miss French found him in the morgue.”

“Can we please get out of here?” Sutherland asked. “I thought this was a rescue mission; you’re talking more than a fucking cabinet meeting and making about as little sense.”

The stunned taxi driver still did not move.

“Shouldn’t you have a limo and bodyguards and the works?” she asked.

“Well, if we’re going to get technical,” Carrie snapped. “As it is, he’s got us, and I suggest that we get out of here.”

Carrie bundled the Prime Minister into the back of the taxi, much to his protest at being manhandled on top of already having died that evening and been poked with needles by Lacey.

Lacey should have taken this as her cue to leave. He was in good hands; everything would be all right. All she had to do now was avoid the hospital for a couple of days until the furore died down and Sutherland was officially alive and back in Downing Street again.

Her phone buzzed with the arrival of a text message, and the weight of it in her hand reminded her of her earlier phone call to Dorothy and the test tubes of blood she’d dropped off in the pathology lab whilst she’d had Sutherland hiding in the closet. She couldn’t walk away now. Like it or not, she was in too deep. She’d been in too deep the moment she decided to help the poor man avoid the Suits rather than simply informing the necessary authorities that he was alive.

She looked at the message; it was from her father.

_DID YOU STEAL THE PM???_

She ignored it and shoved her phone back in her bag. She could answer later, once everything wasn’t quite so up in the air.

“Are you coming, darling?” Carrie was standing by the open taxi door. “All things considered I think we might need you. As amazingly put together as I look right now, I’m just a tad worse for wear and a sober brain might be helpful. And, of course, we can work out some kind of recompense for the marvellous help you’ve already given.”

It was not exactly the promise of recompense that swayed Lacey, but she couldn’t deny that when one of the most powerful people in the country – she’d seen _Yes Minister_, she knew how much power the Civil Service held – said that she might be needed, it did make her preen a little.

“My moped’s round the corner,” she said. “I’ll follow you.”

With that, she thought, she’d effectively thrown her lot in with Sutherland and sealed her fate, no matter what that might be once the Suits caught up to them. If the Suits caught up to them. Maybe now that they’d discovered the body was missing, they’d realise what had happened and give it up as a bad job.

Carrie gave a nod of understanding and got back into the taxi. Immediately a heated discussion started up between her and the taxi driver, and Lacey left them to it, hurrying round the corner to where she’d left her moped, praying that this was not the one night that her luck had run out and she’d been clamped. Mercifully, the tired little Yamaha was waiting for her exactly where she’d left it earlier in the evening, as free as a bird.

A couple of minutes later she was following the taxi down the winding lanes that led away from Stoke Mandeville and into the middle of the dark countryside. She had no idea where she was going, all the roads looked the same at this time of night, and a thought struck her that they might be headed for Chequers. She quickly squashed it; there was no way she’d be allowed in there and Carrie wouldn’t have invited her.

They did not end up outside Chequers. They ended up outside a well-appointed detached house set back from the road on a leafy avenue in a quaint village. It was so typically English and respectable that it made the perfect hideout for a supposedly-dead Prime Minister and his partners in crime, and Lacey had to laugh at the sheer absurdity of the situation as she pulled into the sweeping driveway and parked up next to the taxi.

“Right. Coffee, I think,” Carrie said as she helped Sutherland out of the back of the taxi. “Would you like to come in for some, Ursula?” she asked the taxi driver. “You can leave your meter running if you like, but after all tonight’s excitement, I think you deserve something.”

Ursula was very visibly in two minds before she switched the taxi engine off and got out.

“Whatever,” she muttered. “Tonight’s already so goddamn weird. Might as well have coffee with the Prime Minister who just got kidnapped from a hospital.”

Mrs de Ville let them into the house and set about making coffee as everyone else settled in the living room – as stylish as Carrie and her mother looked, Lacey had to admit that the décor was absolutely atrocious. Carrie was fussing over Sutherland, who was not at all appreciative.

“I’m not sure I like you like this,” he muttered. “Worrying like a mother hen isn’t a good look on you. Where’s the snarky wisecracker telling me to get a grip every ten minutes.?

“Oh, she’s still here. It’s not every day that your boss dies and rises from the grave. I was distraught, Robert, I’ll have you know. Ask Mother. She’ll have to get the front wall repaired. I can’t believe how dismissive of my affections you are. I’ll withhold them next time you find yourself waking up in a morgue. You’ll be on your own then.”

Sutherland smiled. “That’s the Carrie I know.”

Mrs de Ville came in bearing a tray laden with cups, cafetière, sugar bowl and milk jug, along with a plate of chocolate biscuits, and Lacey reached out to intercept the cup that was heading towards Sutherland.

“No! I told you, you’re on water until we know what killed you. Besides, you already told me you thought it was your coffee that had been poisoned, surely that should put you off the stuff.”

Carrie raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think anything could put Robert off his coffee.”

Sutherland just glowered at Lacey. “Can I at least have a cigarette?” he asked, looking over at Mrs de Ville slotting one into the end of her holder. “After everything I’ve been through tonight, I think I deserve that small comfort at least.”

As a semi medical professional, Lacey knew that the correct answer was no, but the poor man looked so incredibly done with absolutely everything that she relented.

“Fine.”

He looked to Carrie, who had just accepted the pack from her mother and who rolled her eyes before handing it to him.

“Do you ladies mind if we light up?” Mrs de Ville asked Lacey and Ursula. “I wholeheartedly agree with the Prime Minister concerning the stressful events of the night and I’m not even the one who got assassinated.”

Ursula shrugged. “It’s your house, I’m just here for the ride. Well, that’s not strictly true, I’m here because I am the ride.”

“The one good thing about coming home is that I can use a cigarette holder and not look pretentious,” Carrie said.

“No, you still look pretentious,” Sutherland muttered. “There’s just two of you looking pretentious together.”

“I’m sorry, did you say someone had been assassinated?” Ursula said. Everyone in the room pointed to Sutherland and Ursula’s eyebrows shot to her hairline. “I’ve been in a car all night, I don’t think I’m up to speed here, and if you’re going to invite me in and give me coffee then I think I need to know the whole story in case some government scientists try to do experiments on me.” She looked at Lacey with suspicion. “You’re not a government scientist, are you?”

“Hell no.” Lacey threw her hands up in defence. “I just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time when the assassinee woke up, because the assassin didn’t do a very good job.”

“Right.” Ursula stared into the depths of her coffee cup and the room fell silent for a while.

“We’ve got to get to the bottom of this before someone realises that you’re missing,” Carrie said suddenly, stubbing out her cigarette and jumping up before grimacing and rubbing her head. “Ugh, Mother, why did you decide that elderflower wine was a good idea?”

“Elderflower wine is always a good idea. I think the problem came when we decided to bring gin into the mix.”

Lacey wished that she wasn’t on her moped. She could really have used some gin.

“Anyway, Sir Albert’s up to his neck in it, I swear. He’s locked me out of everything. Why’s he even down here in the first place? If you’ve got me you shouldn’t need him. He should be running the show up in London.”

Sutherland shrugged. “I didn’t invite him. I didn’t even know he was down here. Bad news must have travelled fast when you found me.”

Carrie shook her head. “No, he was already here, there’s no way he could have got here from London that fast.”

“Well, we already know that he’s a fucking piece of work, so it’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination to think he’d stretch to murder. I mean, he’s always hated me ever since I made it clear I wasn’t going to be his lapdog and he couldn’t just shove his hand up my arse and run the country through me like he did to my predecessor.”

Lacey couldn’t help but give a snort of laughter at that summation.

“It’s settled then. Sir Albert was responsible!” Mrs de Ville clapped her hands together. “I told you I was made to be a sleuth.”

“Mother, you did precisely nothing. And besides, as much as we all hate Sir Albert, we need some kind of proof.” Carrie’s eyes lit up. “Ursula! How do you feel about earning another fare?”

“Is this one going to involve illegal activity?”

“Well, that depends on your definition of illegal.”

Lacey’s phone buzzed again; she hoped it wasn’t her dad persisting with questions about the stolen Prime Minister.

Luckily, it was Dorothy with the test results.

_D: Who the hell did you take this blood from? Are they still alive? Have you been sneaking around with your dad’s corpses?_

_L: Classified, yes, and technically no._

_D: Technically… You know what, I don’t want to know. Anyway, here we go._

“Ok, it looks like you were poisoned with something I can’t pronounce that was extracted from the rhododendron plant, and you’ll be pleased to know that you can now eat and drink whatever you’d like as long as it does not contain rhododendrons.”

“Thank God.” Sutherland attacked the plate of biscuits with relish.

The conversation with Dorothy brought Lacey’s mind back full circle to the hospital.

“This Sir Albert guy you keep talking about,” she said. “Tall, grey suit, not much hair and what’s there is white, grey eyes, looks like he could kill you at fifty paces with dour expression alone?”

Sutherland nodded. “Yes, that certainly sounds like him. Head of the Civil Service.”

“Yeah, he was at the hospital. He was the one who kept delaying your autopsy and the one who, according to Dad, went ballistic when he handed off your effects to forensics without his say-so.”

“Yes, that definitely sounds like him.”

Carrie and Sutherland looked at each other.

“Bastard,” Carrie said. “Right, that settles it. We’re going to Chequers for evidence.”

Sutherland grabbed the last biscuit. “Can you get me some clothes whilst you’re there?”


	5. Chapter 5

Lacey was alone in the living room with Sutherland. Mrs de Ville had vanished off somewhere and Carrie was outside talking to Ursula about the best way to get into Chequers without being questioned, trying to convince the taxi driver that everything was perfectly above board, honest. 

Before, when it had just been her and Sutherland in the morgue, it hadn’t been anywhere near as awkward as it was now. Before, there had been much more urgency, and Sutherland had been a lot groggier from having just died and come back to life, and Lacey had had a lot more to focus on than the fact she was alone with the Prime Minister.

Now that she didn’t have to worry about someone coming along and finding them and she didn’t have to worry about keeping him safe from a bunch of civil servants who were probably the ones to kill him in the first place, things were much more awkward. For some reason, she kept replaying the moment she’d run into the morgue in her mind, and she could barely string more than two thoughts together before something in her brain would helpfully remind her that she’d seen the Prime Minister naked and that he did have a rather nice arse. 

To be honest, the rest of him wasn’t too bad either. He’d look better if he weren’t quite so stressed, but Lacey had always had a bit of a soft spot for silver foxes. She might not agree with his party line, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t find the man himself objectively attractive. 

The silence in the living room stretched on, and Lacey wondered what she ought to say to fill it, rather than just sitting here staring at the man until someone came to rescue them from this void. 

Thankfully, Sutherland spoke first. 

“Thank you,” he said. “I don’t think that I really had the chance to express my gratitude back when we were in the hospital before, everything was a bit…”

“Frantic?” Lacey suggested. 

“Yes.” Sutherland sighed. “I do really appreciate all your help. I think that there are quite a few people in your position who would have been quite happy to leave me to my fate. Or finish the job, you know.”

Lacey snorted. “Oh, believe me, I’ve been tempted over the last couple of years, and you and I are still going to have a discussion about student loan forgiveness at some point. But, ultimately, I’m a decent human being and I like to believe that you are too. And, you know, murder is bad, even if it does happen to people you don’t like.” She paused. “Well, it’s not that I don’t like you.” Good grief, why was she trying to justify herself? She’d saved the man’s life and snuck him out of the hospital; she didn’t need to be friends with him so why was she trying to ingratiate herself? “More that I don’t like your policies and the way your party thinks.”

“Fair enough.” Sutherland drained his coffee and made a face. “You’re right, maybe this experience has served to put me off coffee a bit.”

Lacey laughed. “I told you so. You know, when I was growing up, I always thought that politics was the most boring thing ever and I couldn’t believe that anyone would want to be Prime Minister. Now it’s got a lot more exciting. Although, that said, I still can’t believe that anyone would want to be Prime Minister when the rate of assassination just went up by a hundred per cent.”

“It would only have gone up by a hundred per cent if they had actually succeeded,” Sutherland pointed out.

“According to everyone who isn’t us, they did succeed.” Lacey shrugged. “Face it, you’re in a dangerous line of work. Not as dangerous as being the American president though. We’ve still got a while to go before we catch them up in terms of assassinated premiers.”

She paused, thinking deeply into her long-perceived notions of politics and politicians. Since she had one here, the top dog no less, she might as well get a few things off her chest. “Why did you want to become Prime Minister anyway?”

Sutherland sighed. “Because I thought that I could change the country and make people’s lives better. It’s only once you get into government that you realise just how hard that is. Power is always limited, and so it should be – think what would happen if there were no restraints in place.”

Lacey nodded. “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

“Exactly. It’s something that you’re all too aware of when you get to be in my position.”

“Ever been tempted?”

“What?”

“Ever been tempted to use your power for evil? I mean, come on, we’re slap bang in the middle of an excellent villain origin story here. Poisoned and left for dead by the people you trusted…”

Sutherland scoffed. “I wouldn’t trust Sir Albert as far as I could throw him.”

“You’re ruining my narrative here!” Lacey sighed. “Why do I bother? I should have left you in the morgue.”

She didn’t mean it, and the worst thing was that she knew Sutherland knew she didn’t mean it as well. He gave a little chuckle, but it came out more tired than anything, turning into a yawn that he tried and failed to mask.

It served to remind Lacey of how late it was – well, how early now, given that it was long past midnight – and that she too was running on empty. She wondered how long this limbo was going to last. She had done her part, so to speak, delivering the Prime Minister into safe hands, and yet here she was still, for some reason unwilling to go home and consider her job done.

She tried to justify it to herself by saying that Carrie couldn’t possibly allow her to go home now and possibly ruin the secret of Sutherland’s survival, but she knew deep down that she still felt the same sense of responsibility towards him that had driven her to get him out of the hospital in the first place. It was the same acute sense of justice that had fuelled her in her current career path – the need to see victims vindicated and the perpetrators of the crimes against them punished.

“I have to say, although I’ve not met many forensic scientists in my time, you’re not at all how I imagined one would be,” Sutherland said presently, startling Lacey out of her train of thought. Spooky that he should mention it just as she was pondering it herself.

“Well, it’s not all the glamour of CSI,” she said. “Not that CSI is all that glamorous most of the time. Most of it’s sitting in laboratories looking through microscopes. And not all forensic scientists are nerds in lab coats like procedurals would have you believe. Some of us ride mopeds and rescue politicians in our spare time.”

She leaned back in her chair, running a hand through her hair and wishing it were possible for her to teleport out of the situation, get a few hours’ sleep in her own bed, then blink back in as if nothing had happened and continue the conversation. She didn’t want to leave Sutherland and Carrie to fend for themselves against whatever internal workings had brought them to this, but at the same time, she wasn’t really sure what she, Ursula and Mrs de Ville could do to help them.

She was saved from any further awkwardness by the entry of the lattermost into the room again.

“I’ve made up the spare beds,” she said, completely matter of fact. “I for one have been completely exhausted by this ordeal and if my errant daughter doesn’t come back in here soon I shall go to bed without saying goodnight or getting the latest in the plan off her.” She paused. “Although, that said, if Ursula wants to stay over as well, then people will have to start bunking up.”

Her gaze travelled from Sutherland to Lacey and back again, giving a sage nod before she disappeared out of the room.

Lacey leapt out of her seat, following the older woman out, not for any reason other than to get away from Sutherland’s physical presence whilst she also had the mental image of bunking up with him. She should not be finding the Prime Minister, of all people, this attractive. She definitely should not be thinking about sleeping with him. She absolutely should not be thinking about sleeping with him when he’d been functionally dead just a few hours ago. The poor man would need rest and recuperation, not riding into the mattress.

Although, given his current levels of stress, perhaps riding him into the mattress would provide the relaxation that he needed.

She stepped out into the driveway, where Carrie and Ursula were still very confidential beside the taxi. Carrie noticed her.

“Are you leaving us, darling?” she asked. “I was going to ask if you wanted to participate in the great expedition.”

Lacey shook her head. “No, no. I’m still here. I’m in this deep already, I might as well stick it out to the end.”

Ursula nodded. “That’s the principle I’m working on too. Anyway, we’re off to Chequers and praying we don’t get killed. Are you coming?”

“No, I don’t think so. Someone’s got to stay here and keep an eye on Sutherland. We don’t want anyone coming and finishing the job, and no offence to your mum, but I think she might need back up.”

“No offence taken. I’d best let her know that we’re going. Actually, can you do that, darling? If I tell her then she’ll want to come too, and whilst I just about managed to keep her reigned in at the hospital, I don’t trust her in the vicinity of government buildings. Wish us luck! We’re going to need it!” She flung herself into the back of the taxi and waved out of the window.

“We’re going to need more than luck,” Ursula muttered as she got into the driver’s seat. “We’re going to need a bloody miracle.”

The taxi backed out of the driveway just as the sun was beginning to come up, and Lacey felt the events of the day beginning to weigh heavy on her shoulders. All she really wanted now was a nap, but she had thrown her lot in with Carrie and Sutherland for better or worse.

Just as she was turning to go back inside and ponder her next steps, her phone buzzed with the arrival of another message. It was from her father again, and she remembered that she had never responded to his first frantic question of if she had stolen the Prime Minister.

_Where are you? Is everything all right?_

Lacey felt a sharp pang of guilt that her dad was so worried about her. Although she didn’t want to tell him the full extent of what was going on, she knew that she had to let him know that she was safe. Before she could reply, another message arrived.

_Is you-know-who alive?_

She snorted, immediately reminded of Harry Potter, and typed out a quick response. She loved the fact that he was using a strange little kind of code, but then again, she wouldn’t put it past the government to be tapping their phones whilst all this upheaval was going on and the Civil Service were desperately trying to find the Prime Minister’s corpse.

_Yes, y-k-w is alive. I am safe and well and hiding out with him. Being taken care of by an old lady with a taste for gin and cigarette holders. I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. Well. Later today._

She paused before sending and added: _I’ll call you at midday._

Hopefully by then, she’d have more of a plan, and if something did go terribly wrong and she ended up imprisoned in a basement at Chequers, or, in a terrible worst case scenario, in a morgue herself, then her dad would know to send out a search party if she didn’t check in.

His response came a moment later.

_Stay safe, Lace._ _Keep y-k-w safe too._

She smiled and stepped back into the house, closing the door on the world outside and hoping that whatever Carrie and Ursula got up to at Chequers, they would be both successful and quick about it, so that her life could continue back on the nice and boring course that it had been taking before.

Lacey already knew, however, that it would likely never be quite the same again.


	6. Chapter 6

“So, I’ve got two questions.”

Considering what they were about to undertake, Carrie would have forgiven Ursula for having many more than two questions. Carrie herself had several questions, most of them coming back to the ultimate question, one to which she did not know the answer: why had she drunk so much elderflower wine tonight?

“Fire away.”

“How are you going to get in once we get there, and do you even know what you’re looking for once you get inside?”

Carrie pondered these questions for a moment. They were certainly very good questions, and shamefully enough, they were not among the questions that Carrie had been asking herself. 

“Actually, I’ve thought of a third.” Ursula glanced over at her passenger. “Are you completely, absolutely insane?”

“Darling, you have to be a little bit mad to work in the civil service, it’s the only way that any of us are able to survive all of the politicians.” She paused. It was true that she had launched into this plan without much of, well, a plan, but one thing that years of working with Sutherland and everyone else in government had taught Carrie was that she was very good at thinking on her feet. It made her proud to remember just how many seemingly inevitable catastrophes had been avoided at the last minute due to her quick intervention. 

Failed assassinations had never yet featured on the list, but it seemed like as good a thing as any to add to her repertoire. 

“Right.” Ursula was silent for a long time as they drove through the countryside, the dawn beginning to break over them. “And about the other two questions?”

“Well, considering how hushed up Spencer is trying to keep everything at the moment, I should imagine that I’ll be able to get in on sheer audacity alone. I’m the PM’s Chief of Staff, they’re not going to stop me without good reason, even if Spencer told me to go home.” 

“Right.” Ursula was still clearly unconvinced. “And what are you looking for when you get there? I highly doubt that the culprit will have left a lot of evidence lying around. This isn’t Midsomer Murders.”

“Maybe not, but I’ve played enough games of Cluedo in my time, and you can’t deny that this is a large and ominous country house.”

They were nearing the Chequers drive now, the house just visible in the distance, and Ursula nodded.

“Yep, very large and ominous, I’ll definitely give you that. I thought we’d established that he was poisoned, not hit with any lead piping.”

Carrie sighed theatrically. “Do you have to spoil my analogies? I’m doing the best I can here.”

For the first time since they had first met her on their journey to the hospital, Ursula really laughed. It was a genuine laugh of amusement, nothing sarcastic or malicious in it, and Carrie smiled. 

“OK, I’ll trust your judgement,” she said eventually. “Now, do I just drive straight up, or should I park around the corner, or what? And please don’t suggest speeding through the barrier, I don’t think that the insurance would like me for that.”

The security checkpoint was coming up, stereotypical red and white barrier across the road. 

“You might as well drive on up.” Carrie squinted through the windscreen, trying to see who was on duty in the security booth, but it was impossible. “There’s no point in trying to sneak in if there’s no need to.” She rummaged in her bag for her ID as Ursula inched the car closer and closer to the barrier.

Steve was on duty in the booth, and Carrie thought that she might be in with a chance. She’d spent enough time at Chequers that she knew all of the security staff probably better than they wanted her to, and Steve was one who could be considered a friend in a time of need. She hoped. 

Steve looked at her ID, at her, back at her ID, and then at his watch. 

“It’s five o’clock in the morning,” he said. 

Carrie raised an eyebrow. “You don’t say.”

Steve looked at her in disbelief. “What could possibly be so important that it can’t wait until later?”

Carrie was about to say something along the lines of the Prime Minister being dead, but she stopped herself just in time. “When did you come on shift, Steve?”

“Two o’clock.”

“And has Spencer spoken to you at all about certain events that transpired last night in this very building?”

Steve shook his head as he handed her ID back to her, and Carrie gave a theatrical sigh. 

“Well, I’m sure that what you don’t know can’t hurt you, but there’s certainly a lot that we’re going to have to catch you up on at some point. Suffice it to say, I have some urgent business to attend to.”

“Do you want me to phone up to the house and let them know you’re coming?”

“No, no,” Carrie said, hoping that she didn’t sound too hasty. “They’re expecting me. I’m sure it won’t take long, but you know how they all are.”

No elaboration was needed. Steve did indeed know how the Civil Service were, having worked alongside them for enough years to be able to take all the red tape in his stride. 

The barrier lifted up and Ursula proceeded up the driveway towards the house. 

“I can’t believe that worked,” she said. 

“Oh, I can.” Carrie grinned. “Spencer likes to play his cards close to his chest. He always has, it’s one of the many things about him that really, really infuriates Robert.”

“Right…” They fell silent again until they were parking up in front of the house, whereupon Ursula spoke again. 

“You know, I’ve never really known what this place looked like until now. I’ve always known vaguely that Chequers was a place and the Prime Minister lived there sometimes, but I’m not sure what I was expecting. So, this is what my hard-earned taxes go towards.”

“Yep, mine too.” Carrie patted her new friend’s arm. “Now, you just wait here, and I’ll go and see what I can find.”

“Are you sure you’re going to be all right on your own?” Considering how sceptical Ursula had been for the entirety of the night so far, Carrie was quite touched by her concern. “I mean, you’re already hungover if not still drunk.”

Carrie was not quite as touched by that remark, and she hopped out of the car. “I’ll be fine, darling. I always land on my feet.” This statement was not helped by her losing her balance as she tried to shut the car door, and she caught Ursula’s raised eyebrow. “I’m fine!”

She stood outside the house for a long time, pondering the best way in. On the one hand, just going up and knocking on the front door probably wouldn’t get her very far, because the people inside the house would be aware of everything that had happened overnight, and Spencer had likely instructed them not to let her in. On the other hand, given the vast amounts of CCTV around the place, sneaking in through a window was not going to be a valid idea either. 

Still, nothing chanced, nothing gained. She could always think up a new plan later. Carrie strode up to the front door and knocked sharply. Not that she really needed to knock, they would have seen her coming. Announcing her presence loudly might not have been the best option, but she had a few tricks up her sleeve yet. Namely, the fact that Robert was indeed still alive and kicking, and not in the hospital morgue where he was supposed to be. This would have thrown Spencer off balance, and hopefully, he would be so busy trying to perform damage limitation that she would be able to work around him.

Sure enough, a few moments later the door opened, and Carrie stepped inside to find herself face to face with a bleary-eyed security guard.

“Good morning, Charlie.”

Charlie looked her up and down and then up at the clock on the wall. “You’re here early. Spencer said that you’d gone to stay with your mother after…” The sentence trailed off. 

“Yes, yes.” Carrie waved Charlie’s statement away. “I forgot some things, darling. You know, with everything going on, my head was all over the place.” She caught the guard’s slightly incredulous look. “Well, more all over the place than it already was. If you just let me through like a sweetheart, I’ll be in and out in two minutes.”

Well, that wasn’t likely, considering that she still didn’t really know what she was looking for in terms of evidence, but no-one else needed to know that.

Charlie was definitely in two minds about the whole thing. Whilst the internal security team were definitely aware of what had happened, Carrie wasn’t sure how much Spencer would have told them about the events that had occurred after the Prime Minister had been taken away, and whether or not he would have instructed them to keep her out of the building after he had sent her home. 

Finally, Charlie stood back and let her through. “All right. But be quick. Spencer’s in a real mood tonight. I mean, it’s a huge shock, I can understand that, but he’s being even more of an arsehole about it than usual.”

Carrie air-kissed both of Charlie’s cheeks before practically dancing through the metal detector. “Darling, you’re a treasure.”

She was in, and no real subterfuge had been needed. Now all she needed to do was find her evidence whilst hopefully avoiding Spencer. 

The first port of call was Robert’s office. The open doorway was sealed off with strips of police tape, and it took a bit of wriggling to ease her way inside. For a brief moment she wondered if she should have worn gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints, but then she remembered that she was in here so often that all her prints would be all over everything anyway. 

The coffee cup that Robert had drunk from, and that had most likely poisoned him, was conspicuously absent. Spencer had obviously taken away that particular shred of evidence. There wasn’t likely to be anything else in the room. Carrie leaned back against the desk with a sigh, finally accepting that she had not thought this through properly. 

It was as she was looking at everything on the desk that inspiration struck. It would be a tricky idea to pull off, but if it worked, it was the best shot that she had. 

She needed Spencer’s phone. He never went anywhere without it and if there was going to be anything incriminating anywhere in Chequers, then it would be there. The downside to this, of course, was that he never went anywhere without it, so getting her hands on it would be difficult. 

She straightened up and squeezed out of the doorway again, creeping down the corridors on bare feet towards the office that Spencer used on the rare occasions that he came down from London. She could hear him talking as she got closer, and it made her smile to hear that he seemed rather flustered. 

Carrie inched closer, trying to get the gist of what was being said. Maybe this conversation would be enough in itself and she wouldn’t need his phone after all. She grabbed her own, setting it to record, and she pressed herself up against the wall. 

“Yes, I know that bodies don’t get out of morgues without assistance!” Spencer was saying. “No, I don’t know where he’s gone! I can understand kidnapping a living Prime Minister but kidnapping a dead one is just ridiculous!”

There was a long pause; Carrie couldn’t make out the voice on the other end, but they didn’t sound impressed. She wondered who on earth he could be talking to, her heart beating painfully in her mouth. Since beginning to suspect Spencer, she’d always had the horrible sinking feeling that he wasn’t working alone. Although he was certainly scheming - he wouldn’t have risen to his current lofty position had he not been - she didn’t think that he was intelligent enough to think up an assassination plot all on his own. Especially not one that used a niche poison that simulated natural death like Robert’s had been. 

Robert had his enemies, all politicians did, and being Prime Minister meant that he had more than most. Carrie shook her head, not wanting to get into that train of thought. She worked with all the cabinet on a daily basis and whilst she knew that there were power struggles and more than one person with their eyes on Robert’s job, she didn’t think that any of them would stretch to murder. 

She hoped none of them would stretch to murder.

“Yes, I’m sure!” She could hear the exasperation in Spencer’s voice and pressed a hand over her mouth to stop her from giggling and betraying her position. Oh, this frustration really couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. “Look, he’s dead, he can’t exactly have gone far. Yes, I’m sure he’s dead!”

Carrie began to creep away. She’d heard more than enough, and Charlie might be coming to look for her at any moment. She was almost at the end of the corridor when she heard Spencer’s door open, and she jumped through the nearest doorway to avoid detection, ending up in the small cloakroom where visitors could freshen up before meeting the Prime Minister. There was some kind of commotion going on at the front of the house, and her stomach churned, hoping that Ursula was still ok in the taxi. 

Spencer marched down the corridor, right past Carrie’s hiding place none the wiser, and began barking orders. Carrie peeped out, waiting until the coast was clear before scuttling back towards the front door and Charlie.

The guard seemed rather relieved to see her; the front door was open and from outside, Carrie could see Ursula being herded back towards the car by one of the other guards.

“Is everything all right?” Carrie asked. 

Charlie nodded. “She was trying to get in to look for you, muttering something about being left stranded without you paying the fare. Did you get what you were looking for?”

“Oh, yes. It was a very successful trip, thank you, Charlie.”

Carrie waltzed out of the door towards Ursula, whose expression turned into one of relief as they walked quickly towards the car. 

“Don’t worry, I’m here. Your fare will be paid in full as soon as we get back to my mother’s.”

“I, erm, I wasn’t actually worried about the fare.” Ursula looked up from fastening her seatbelt, her face a little sheepish. “I was more worried about you. I thought a distraction might help and it was the only thing I could think of.”

Carrie could only nod, stunned. “Well, it certainly worked, thank you.”

“Glad to be of service. Did you get it? Well, I don’t exactly know what ‘it’ is supposed to be. Did you get something?”

Carrie waved her phone. “I did indeed.”

“Great.” Ursula seemed genuinely happy to hear of the successful plot, and the trip back to the de Ville residence was made in uncharacteristic quiet. Carrie kept glancing sideways at Ursula as she drove, still gobsmacked that Ursula had been worried about her and had tried to help in her not necessarily legal endeavours, especially after everything else that had happened during the night. 

She was definitely beginning to see her new friend in an entirely different light.


	7. Chapter 7

Sutherland had a problem.

Well, that wasn’t strictly true. He had several problems, and most of them were related to the fact that the Head of the Civil Service had tried to kill him and had very nearly succeeded. However, those problems were so large and far-reaching, and Sutherland had so very little idea of how to solve them, that he’d had to put them to the side for the sake of his own sanity.

Carrie was dealing with those problems by going to Chequers and collecting what evidence she could against Spencer. Sutherland had no idea what kind of evidence he was hoping that she would find there, but with any luck, she’d go through Spencer’s luggage and find a bottle marked with a skull and crossbones and a folder containing a detailed, ten-step plan for assassinating the Prime Minister.

With those problems put away until Carrie got back – there wasn’t really much else that Sutherland could do about the situation since he was still supposed to be dead – he was focussing on the one problem, still tangentially related to the myriad other problems, that he did have control over.

That problem was Lacey French, and now that he thought about it, Sutherland wasn’t sure that he had any control over this problem either. The two of them had been thrust into each other’s worlds by a twist of fate that no one in their right mind could have foreseen, and now they were stuck with each other.

Not that Sutherland minded being stuck with Lacey. Far from it, and therein lay the problem. Out of all the things that politicians could do that were inappropriate, finding a young woman at least twenty, if not more, years his junior, who had just saved his life, attractive, was probably up there on the list.

Sutherland ran his hands through his hair with a groan. This was not the time, nor the place, and whilst he wanted to think about something, _anything_ to take his mind off whatever shenanigans Carrie was performing and whatever trouble she might be getting into on his behalf, he really didn’t want his thoughts to be turned in Lacey’s direction. She was just a good Samaritan who had helped him out because it was the right thing to do. She’d had no obligation to rescue him, and she certainly had no obligation to stay with him now that he was safe. (Although, having seen Maddie de Ville’s drinking habits, he wasn’t entirely sure that safe was the right word for her company.)

The fact remained, though, that Lacey was still here, determined to see this rollercoaster through to the bitter end, no matter what that might be. As worried as he was for Carrie and what she might be getting herself into, Sutherland knew Carrie, and he knew that she would always have his back through thick and thin. Considering that Lacey’s father was the pathologist who’d been about to cut him open, Sutherland was certain that Lacey was already in some kind of trouble, and he really didn’t want her or her family to suffer any repercussions as a result of her kindness. He could only hope that by the end of all this, when the world was put back to rights, he would be able to get everything sorted out with no ill effects.

He pushed Lacey firmly to the back of his mind and looked around the room that Mrs de Ville had shown him to. It was a small and neat guest room, no sign of any personality in it, and he wondered if he was the first person to use it. He had to admire how easily Mrs de Ville had taken to having them all camped out in her home, as if taking in a dead Prime Minister was an everyday occurrence.

He rolled his head, trying to get the cricks out of his neck. He wasn’t sure how long he had been lying on the autopsy table for, but it had done a number on his back. Perhaps a shower would help. Mrs de Ville had dug out some of her late husband’s clothes for him, and whilst they weren’t exactly his style, anything was better than hospital scrubs.

Mrs de Ville was more than happy to provide towels and soap when asked, and standing under the hot spray, Sutherland felt the tension beginning to ease out of his shoulders and spine. He couldn’t deny that he was beginning to get too old for adventures like this. Well, it wasn’t really an adventure so much as a nerve-wracking nightmare that he still wasn’t entirely sure was real. Lacey probably thought that it was more of an adventure, with the way that she had taken everything in her stride. The thought of his age brought him back full circle and he cursed, annoyed with himself for ending up with Lacey on his mind again.

He pushed her firmly to the side again and rinsed off the soap suds. As much as he wanted to, he knew that he couldn’t stay in the shower forever, and he shut off the water with a sigh, trying to pull his thoughts away from everything that had happened tonight and onto the pressing problems that had brought him down to Chequers for meetings in the first place. Just because he was technically dead didn’t mean that he couldn’t still do his job.

Unfortunately for Sutherland, his resolve not to think about Lacey was utterly shattered when he came out of the bathroom and almost bumped headlong into her on the landing. They both froze, and Sutherland watched as Lacey’s eyes took him in from head to toe and back again. Technically, she’d seen him wearing less than a towel, but right now, he felt far more exposed than he had done in the morgue. Perhaps because, back in the morgue, he’d been more concerned with the fact he’d just come back from the dead, and a random young woman seeing him naked was of secondary importance.

Now, Lacey was very much his primary concern and he was standing here like a lemon in front of her in just a towel, and was that an expression of appreciation on her face?

He decided not to hang around trying to analyse the situation any longer and bolted back into his room, shutting the door firmly behind him and leaning back against it with a groan. It was almost as if fate had it in for him and was determined to keep reminding him of Lacey’s existence and the fact he was really beginning to like her more than he should, until he could deny it no longer.

Maybe, a small, optimistic part of him said, accepting it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Maybe Lacey was feeling the same way. She didn’t seem too horrified by what she had seen, at least.

He shook the unhelpful thought away, but he couldn’t stop it from coming back in idle moments as he dried off and put on the provided shirt and trousers.

Lacey was back in the living room by the time Sutherland returned there, and he couldn’t decide whether he was glad about that or not. On the one hand, it was still rather embarrassing to face her after everything else that had happened – and that seemed to keep happening – throughout the night, but on the other hand, his only other option for company was Maddie de Ville and he didn’t really know how he felt about spending any amount of time in conversation with her. It was clear where Carrie got most of her quirks from, but a lifetime of dealing with politicians had sharpened Carrie’s most eccentric edges. Her mother was the very definition of a cloudcuckoolander.

Lacey looked up as he came in. She was curled up in one of the armchairs, and for the first time that night, she was looking as worn down as Sutherland felt himself.

“Hey,” she said. “It’s good to see you wearing proper clothes again.”

Sutherland sighed. “Yes, let’s not dwell on that.”

Lacey just chuckled. “Hey, you’ve got nothing to worry about from my point of view. You might be the Prime Minister, but I think you can still get it.”

“Great.” He wasn’t sure what to make of that. He’d just spent the last twenty minutes trying to push all thoughts of Lacey and his growing attraction to her to the back of his mind, but if he didn’t know better, he’d think that she was perhaps showing some degree of attraction back towards him. Maybe this was just her way, familiar and teasing in the same way that Carrie was. There was a lot about Lacey that reminded him of Carrie when he thought about it. No-nonsense, calm under pressure, a tough exterior that softened when her guard was down. Like now, with exhaustion creeping in around the edges.

“How are you feeling?” she asked. It was a genuine question, not just a nicety asked for the sake of it.

“Much better, thank you. The headache’s all but gone now.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

Of course, how he was feeling physically in himself had nothing on what he was feeling emotionally. As much as he was trying to put a brave face on it and take it in his stride, Sutherland couldn’t help but feel scared. He was the Prime Minister; he had an entire crack security team around him at all times and yet someone had still tried to kill him and had very nearly succeeded. There was something in the idea of keeping one’s friends close and one’s enemies closer that didn’t seem to bring him all that much comfort. He’d never seen eye to eye with Sir Albert ever since he’d taken up residence in Downing Street, but he’d never have thought that the Head of the Civil Service was capable of murder.

A shudder ran down his spine at the chilling thought that Sir Albert might not have been working alone. Sutherland knew he was a man with many enemies, but ones that were willing to kill were a completely different matter altogether.

“Are you ok?” Lacey was looking at him with her head on one side, a concerned expression on her face.

Sutherland nodded, then shook his head.

“I’m very aware of my own mortality right now,” he said. “And dealing with the terrible thought that apart from you and Carrie, I have no idea who I can trust in my life anymore.”

“I’m sorry. That must suck.” Lacey stifled a yawn behind her hand. “I guess we don’t really think about the psychological consequences of surviving an assassination. We assume that you’re just happy to be alive…”

“I’m very happy to be alive,” Sutherland said quickly. “Please don’t misunderstand that.”

“No, I know you are. But being happy to be alive doesn’t stop the wondering what might have been, or wondering why, or wondering where you’ll be safe.” She shrugged. “We don’t really get much into psychology in the forensic chemistry field, but it comes into all areas of criminology eventually.”

Sutherland shook his head. “I’d rather not talk about it. Not until Carrie comes back with some kind of evidence at least. Right now, I feel nice and safe here with you, so I’d rather not think about the things that are making me distinctly nervous.”

“You feel safe with me?” There was a moment of soft wonder in Lacey’s expression, before her carefree grin returned. “I think that’s the first time someone’s ever said that.”

“Well, it’s true.”

There was silence for a long time, Lacey staring out across the driveway as she digested what he’d just said. Finally, she looked back at him with a grin.

“All right. If you don’t want to talk about what’s going on tonight, we could have that discussion about student loan forgiveness if you want.”

Sutherland took the chair opposite her, although from the way Lacey was going, he didn’t think that the discussion would last all that long. She seemed to be flagging rapidly now, even if Sutherland himself was feeling very awake and would likely stay that way until he saw Carrie back safe and sound.

He had to admit, despite steeling himself for a fight, Lacey’s points were well thought out and backed up. She was getting very much into her element and had she not been on the verge of dropping off every time she finished speaking, he had no doubt that she’d be killing it on the debating floor. She spoke with a great deal of passion, and it was clear that she would have argued about anything she stood for with just the same fervour. It was refreshing to hear, and even though she was arguing against his own point of view, Sutherland enjoyed listening to her.

Soon, though, the inevitable moment happened, and Lacey succumbed to tiredness, curling in on herself in her chair, hair falling into her face. Sutherland took the throw blanket from the back of her chair and tucked it in around her, sitting back on his heels with a sigh.

He was going to have to admit that he was definitely developing more than a little crush on Lacey.


	8. Chapter 8

Lacey woke up incredibly confused as to where she was and what time it was. It felt like it ought to have been the middle of the night, but there was sunlight streaming in through the windows, and she remembered that the dawn greyness had already been showing outside when she and Sutherland had been talking. She didn’t remember falling asleep and she only had the vaguest of notions of what they had been talking about when she dropped off. Student loans had definitely come into it somewhere.

She unfolded herself out of the chair that she’d crashed in, getting tangled up in the blanket that someone had tucked in around her. She wondered if it was Sutherland. He’d been the only one with her when she’d fallen asleep, after all. 

The smell of breakfast was pervading through the house, despite it probably being closer to lunch time, and Lacey followed her nose through to the kitchen. Sutherland was in there, making eggs and bacon at the stove. 

“Good to see that being poisoned hasn’t affected your appetite.”

He laughed. “And good morning to you too. Well, afternoon.”

Lacey slid into a seat at the kitchen table just as Mrs de Ville came bustling in from the conservatory with a bowl of fresh tomatoes. The domesticity of the scene made her snort. Here she was, hiding out with the Prime Minister in the house of an eccentric old woman that neither of them had met before the previous night. And the Prime Minister was happily making breakfast, and Lacey was trying to tell herself that this increasingly weird scenario was all just a dream and she would wake up back in the morgue having fallen asleep on the desk. Either Sutherland would still be under his sheet, or the morgue would be empty, and Sutherland would be where he belonged in Downing Street. 

She pinched herself, but it was to no avail. She was definitely here. 

“What time is it?” she asked. Mrs de Ville brought over a cup of coffee which Lacey accepted gratefully. 

“Just gone twelve. Not too late for brunch.”

Lacey jerked back into full wakefulness. She’d promised to call her dad at noon to reassure him that she was still all right, and if she didn’t check in soon then he’d probably start scouring the countryside for her in the belief that she’d been kidnapped by the Civil Service.

She grabbed her phone and the coffee and went out into the garden. Hopefully, the others wouldn’t think too much of her sudden disappearance. 

Moe picked up on the first ring.

_“Lace? Is everything ok?”_

“Yeah, I’m fine, I just overslept. It was a weird night.”

_“You’re telling me. How’s you-know-who?”_

Lacey glanced back over her shoulder at the kitchen and the figure of the Prime Minister standing there cooking. “He’s still alive and kicking. It’s really weird, you never think you’ll get to know someone like that.”

_“Going into hiding following a failed assassination brings people together, I imagine.”_ There was a long pause on the other end of the line. _“Do you know when you might be home?”_

Lacey didn’t reply for a long time; she didn’t really know. Theoretically, she could go home at any time. Nothing was stopping her apart from her own stubborn determination to see this through to the end and see justice done. She had no idea what had happened to Carrie on her trip to Chequers to look for evidence, but the fact that Sutherland and Maddie both seemed calm made her think that it had been a success. Or at least that Carrie and Ursula had both come back in one piece. The taxi was nowhere to be seen in the driveway, but Ursula likely had a home of her own to go to and was sensible enough to go to it. 

“I should be back tonight,” she said. She knew that she couldn’t stay embroiled in this world forever, and it would help her to let go if she had a limit in place. The longer she stayed here, the more she would find herself thinking about Sutherland in ways that people really should not think about the Prime Minister. 

_“Well, keep yourself safe.”_

“Of course. Thanks Dad. I’ll see you soon.”

She stayed standing in the garden for a long time after saying goodbye, thinking about the events that had transpired. More specifically, thinking about Sutherland. She really shouldn’t be developing feelings for him. They were part of two extremely different worlds for a start. She was an almost-forensic scientist in the middle of Buckinghamshire, and he was the Prime Minister and lived predominantly in London. She wasn’t exactly part of the elite that he was normally surrounded with. There was no way that he could find anything likeable about her. 

Although, that said, he had been a great conversation partner and he had always taken her seriously when she had been arguing with him, never once brushing off her concerns. And he’d given her a blanket and made sure she was comfortable when she’d nodded off, likely mid-way through him talking. 

She sighed. There was nothing to be gained from standing out here like a lemon, especially when her stomach was loudly informing her of the last time she’d eaten anything substantial and brunch was waiting for her in the house. 

Sutherland and Mrs de Ville were both sitting at the table with plates of eggs, bacon, tomatoes, and toast in front of them when Lacey returned, and she helped herself from the dishes. The food was good, although Lacey would have been quite happy with anything vaguely edible at that point in time. 

“I never had you down as the culinary type,” she said, to end the silence if nothing else. “Don’t you have staff to do all that kind of thing?”

Sutherland shook his head in despair. “You make it sound like I’ve lived in a palace my entire life. Yes, there are kitchen staff, but generally I cook for myself if I’m not hosting a grand reception for several world leaders.”

Annoyingly, that made sense, and Lacey just continued to chew her toast in silence. She really needed to stop finding reasons to like the man. 

They were saved from any awkwardness by Carrie entering the kitchen. If there was one thing that Lacey had learned about Carrie in all of the very brief time that she had known her, it was that she never did anything by halves. Despite having been up all night, she was still dressed to the nines and wearing full make-up.

“Good afternoon, everyone! What a lovely day to get the head of the Civil Service banged up on an attempted murder charge.”

Mrs de Ville looked at her daughter with an expression that was part disbelief and part maternal pride. “Did you find something, then?”

Carrie waved her phone. “I most certainly did, and Spencer’s not going to know what hit him.” She threw herself down into the remaining seat at the table and grabbed a piece of toast out of Sutherland’s hand. “Hey, I found evidence that you’re at the centre of a bloodthirsty power grab plot, the least you can do is give me your toast.”

“When you couch it in those terms, I’m not entirely sure I should be grateful,” Sutherland muttered as Maddie got up to make a fresh batch of toast. 

Lacey watched the interplay between Carrie and Sutherland, and a part of her had to wonder. She wasn’t exactly jealous of the easy familiarity between them, or the fact that Sutherland was so comfortable with Carrie in his personal space, but she’d spent so long trying not to be attracted to him that she hadn’t really thought about whether there was in fact anyone else in the picture, someone who would render her thoughts moot anyway. She knew that he wasn’t married and was nominally single, and she’d always suspected that if there was a significant other in his life then it would be all over the papers, him being such a public figure and all. On the other hand, if his significant other was his closest assistant, then they would certainly be in the best position to keep everything under wraps. 

Carrie’s phone began to ring, and she gave a theatrical sigh, taking her toast with her out of the kitchen and into the living room where they had been holed up the previous evening. If it was a professional call then it probably wasn’t a good idea to take it in a place where the caller could potentially overhear that Sutherland was still alive. Maybe the news had been spread further than they thought.

Lacey still didn’t really understand what the plan was supposed to be in terms of keeping it under wraps. Sutherland’s death had not been reported to the public yet, which meant that there were three distinct groups of people: those who thought he was dead, those who knew he was alive, and those who weren’t aware that there had been any change in his state at all and would hopefully continue their lives none the wiser. She had to smile when she thought of the potential headlines regarding the assassination attempt, and she wondered if there would even be any or if the Civil Service would work to keep everything tightly clamped down. Especially since one of their own was heavily implicated in the plot. She knew that if she’d been reading about everything that had happened on the news, then she wouldn’t believe any of it. She only half-believed it now, and she was living in the middle of it.

“Darlings, I am afraid I am going to have to love you and leave you.” Carrie swept back into the kitchen, taking another two pieces of toast from the rack that Maddie was bringing over to the table. “News of your demise and resurrection has spread to my London-based colleagues and no one knows whether they ought to be planning a funeral, asking Archie to come and take over as interim Prime Minister, or sending the attack dogs to get Sir Albert. I think most of them are hoping for the latter. It’s absolute chaos up there, I’m going to have to go and sort it out personally before anyone else can do something catastrophic.”

“Should I come?” Sutherland was halfway out of his chair, but Carrie pushed him back down. 

“No, no, you sit tight here with Lacey and Mother for a while longer. You’re my secret weapon, darling. I want to be able to pull you out of the bag with relish and enjoy the look on Albert Spencer’s face when he realises just what’s been going on whilst he’s been frantically looking for your corpse.” She kissed him on both cheeks in farewell and did the same to her mother. “I’ll call you when it’s safe for you to come back! In the meantime, avoid rhododendrons!”

With that, she left the kitchen again, and Lacey listened to her rushing around the house gathering her things together. 

“I’ll go and see her off.” Maddie left the kitchen, and if Lacey didn’t know better then she’d say that she’d given her a very pointed look as she closed the door after her. 

Sutherland looked at the door for a long time, then he met Lacey’s eyes. “I think she’s doing that on purpose.”

“What?”

“Leaving us alone together.”

Well, having a pensioner match-make her with the Prime Minister was certainly a new experience for Lacey, but she wasn’t going to knock it yet. Presumably if Maddie was attempting to set them up, then it meant that there was nothing between Carrie and Sutherland, but at the same time, Maddie may not have been the most observant of souls. 

Still, it gave her an opening. If everything went completely down the tubes after this then she never had to see the man again, after all. Her moped was still outside, and she could be at home forgetting about the entire ordeal in half an hour. 

“I was thinking the same,” she said. “But then you and Carrie…”

Sutherland laughed. “I’m the wrong gender for Carrie. No, I think she’s got her sights set on Ursula rather than me.”

“Oh. Right.”

With that particular misapprehension cleared up, Lacey didn’t really know where to go next. She and Sutherland were both still looking at each other, each waiting for the other to make the first move. 

Lacey took a deep breath, sticking to her previous reassurance that if it all went wrong, she could just escape back home and never think of the incident again. She moved around to the seat at the table next to Sutherland that Maddie had just vacated and inched a little closer to him. 

“So…” she began. “Over the last very weird day, I’ve come to the conclusion that despite everything I may have said about you and the government in the past, I do really like you. And I was just wondering if you perhaps liked me too, and that Mrs de Ville was actually making the right choice in leaving us alone together on purpose.”

Sutherland gave a slow nod. “Yes, Lacey. I do like you.”

“And not just because I rescued you from a morgue?”

“Not just because I rescued you from a morgue.” He gave a soft huff of laughter. “To be honest, I’m glad that you were the one to bring it up.”

“Really?”

“Well, you’re a beautiful, bright young thing and I’m a crusty old politician. Things could have gone very badly if I’d made the first move.”

Lacey thought back to when she’d found him in a towel on the landing, and the raging desires that had consumed her mind for those few moments. 

“I get your point. I don’t think that things are going to go badly, though. I mean, by necessity our time together is limited, right? You’ll go back to London. I’ll stay here. It’s a very limited window of opportunity that we’ve got here, and if we both like each other, then we might as well make the most of it.”

Sutherland nodded. “If there’s one thing that I’ve always been good at, it’s seizing windows of opportunity.”

Lacey took the plunge then, leaning in and pressing her lips against Sutherland’s. He accepted her readily, hands coming up to cup her face and pull her in closer. He was a surprisingly good kisser, firm and eager, and Lacey could help but grin as she pulled away. 

“No regrets, Prime Minister?”

“None apart from you calling me that.”

“I have to call you something.”

“I’ve got a name, you know. You can call me Robert.”

Lacey paused. Going onto first name terms made it so much more intimate, more than just a one-night stand. Well, one-day stand, considering how messed-up their sleeping patterns were at the moment. She’d had plenty of one-night stands before but having one with the Prime Minister was something entirely different. 

Oh, what the hell. 

“No regrets, Robert?”

“None.”

He kissed her again, and Lacey scrambled from her chair into his lap. Whatever happened now, she was definitely going to make sure that it was worth it. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the rating change - this fic has now gone up to E!

Lacey felt a sense of the forbidden as she and Sutherland made their way upstairs to her room. Despite Mrs de Ville making up a bed for her, she had not actually slept in it yet, and it felt deliciously wicked to be using a guest bed in someone else’s house just for sex - even if the house’s owner had been tacitly trying to get her together with this particular partner for the entire time they’d been there.

Maddie would probably be cheering them on if she knew what they were doing. Scratch that, Maddie probably knew exactly what they were doing and was cheering them on anyway, but they were still creeping about, the furtiveness adding to the idea that Lacey was doing something she shouldn’t. 

And after all, this was the Prime Minister she was sneaking off for a quickie with. It wasn’t exactly like any of her other boyfriends that she’d had to sneak past her dad or her roommates at university. She was with a man who was virtually untouchable despite being in the public eye all the time, and here she was, getting him in a very private setting and being very sure that she was going to be doing an awful lot of touching.

Sutherland closed the door quietly behind him, and there was a moment of silence, almost a reaffirmation of what they were about to do, giving either of them the chance to back out if they wanted. Lacey already knew that neither of them wanted to, although they were perhaps wondering about what the consequences would be before deciding that they would be worth it. 

She went over to her bag where she’d dumped it in the corner earlier, digging into the very bottom and taking out a couple of condoms, dropping them onto the bed. For the briefest of moments, Lacey wondered if this was Carrie’s childhood bedroom and sincerely hoped it wasn’t.

Then Sutherland had crossed the room towards her, slipping his arms around her back and slanting his mouth over hers, and all such thoughts were gone from her mind immediately. There was a heat and urgency in their kisses, knowing that they did not have long together, and they very much wanted to make the most of the time they did have.

For a minute, Lacey faltered as Sutherland’s hands came down to rest on her hips. She hadn’t showered or changed her clothes in over a day, and she hadn’t exactly been set up for impromptu liaisons even before that. It was a while since her legs and bikini line had seen much attention, having decided to stay out of the dating and casual hook-ups game for a while and concentrate on her studies. 

Naturally, all that had gone out of the window now, and she couldn’t feel self-conscious now, on the brink of what was probably a once in a lifetime experience. Besides, it wasn’t as if Sutherland didn’t know that she was still wearing the same clothes.

Shaking herself out of her moment of indecision, Lacey decided to take the lead. It had worked downstairs and got them this far. She pushed Sutherland towards the bed, climbing onto his lap again as he sat down heavily on the covers, his hands cupping her arse and squeezing her cheeks gently.

“I never had you down as an arse guy, you know,” she said, very aware of how breathless she was sounding already; when Sutherland spoke, he was barely faring much better in those stakes. 

“Well, you were rather interested in mine last night. I’m just returning the favour.”

Lacey rolled her eyes and kissed him again, beginning to unfasten his shirt buttons. She’d seen him naked, yes, but the circumstances had been such that it hadn’t exactly been appropriate to savour the sight. Now she wanted to explore and admire whilst she had the opportunity. 

Sutherland shrugged the shirt off his shoulders and tugged at the hem of her top, lifting it up to expose her bra, her nipples already pebbled against the lace and begging for attention. He licked at the sensitive buds, the damp lace scratching and rubbing and making everything so much more intense. Lacey wrestled her top off fully and unhooked her bra, one hand carding into Sutherland’s hair as he continued to lavish her breasts with attention, alternating kisses and licks and little tugs to her nipples. 

“Now I guess I see what they say about politicians having silver tongues,” she murmured. The look that Sutherland gave her was almost wicked, a little like a challenge: _If you think that this is good, you should see what else I can do with my tongue_. Lacey licked her lips at the prospect. Maybe later, if they still had enough time to take their time after giving in to this first fervent burst of lust.

She pushed him down onto the bed; it took a minute or so of fumbling for them to get comfortable against the pillows, but then that sense of profound urgency was back, a frenzy of messy, chaotic kisses as they tried to touch everywhere at once. Lacey raked her fingers down Sutherland’s chest, flicking at his nipples and relishing the hiss of pleasure that he gave. At least, she assumed it was a hiss of pleasure. She did it again, glancing up at his face. Yes, definitely pleasure. His hands had come back down to her arse, squeezing again as their hips rocked together. She could feel him getting harder against her thigh even through their remaining layers of clothing, and she grinned, slowing her movements a little to make him groan. Lacey would not deny that she had a lot of sex and it was a pastime that she thoroughly enjoyed, but there was something of a different thrill in it this time. She had the most powerful man in the country beneath her, practically at her mercy. 

She sat up, unfastening her jeans so that Sutherland could slide his hands down under her waistband, his grip on her arse distracting her as she went for his own fly. At last, his trousers and underwear were off, and she could look at leisure. 

“You have seen it all before, you know.”

“I know.” Lacey traced her fingertip down his length and cupped his balls. “But now I can have a proper look. And now I get to touch.”

“Yes.” Sutherland’s voice was a little strangled, and she could see his breathing hitch as she gave his balls a gentle squeeze. “Yes, you definitely do. Good grief, Lacey.”

“You’re allowed to swear, you know. You’re not in the House of Commons now.”

“Fucking hell.”

“That’s more like it.”

She crawled back up his body to kiss him deeply again, and he pulled her in close. Lacey liked the desperation; seeing him come so undone at her hand when she had only ever really known him in his public persona, calm and controlled and running the country. It made him even more human than everything else that had happened over the last day had done. 

She scrabbled out of her jeans and thong, the extra fabric between them now more of an annoyance than anything else, and she was pleased when Sutherland followed her lead, one hand delving between her legs to stroke over her mound and along her cleft, exploring in the same tentative way that she had done to his cock, the slowness and gentleness at odds with the rest of their hasty encounter. For all Lacey wanted to make the most of the time that she had, she didn’t want this to be a disappointing moment for either of them if they made too much of their haste.

She slipped two fingers down into her cleft, opening her up and unhooding her clit. Sutherland pressed his thumb against the swollen bud and Lacey threw her head back with a groan. She knew that she shouldn’t be too loud, Maddie could probably hear them, but at the same time, she knew that Maddie was on their side. Of course, there were several increasingly implausible scenarios running through the back of her subconscious wondering if Maddie was intending to burst through the door at an incredibly inopportune moment and take blackmail photos that could bring down the government, but at that moment, with Sutherland rubbing at her clit and dipping one finger into her entrance, she couldn’t bring herself to care for the what-ifs. 

She grabbed one of the condoms from the sheets beside them, getting it on and lining them up before sinking down onto Sutherland’s cock. He groaned as his pelvis bucked up to meet her, eyes closing, and Lacey rolled her hips, rubbing up to his fingers where they were still teasing against her mound, not quite getting her there as he succumbed to his own pleasure. Lacey didn’t mind, he could return the favour afterwards once his brain wasn’t dribbling out of his ears. 

It didn’t take long before he came with a guttural growl of her name.

“Fuck, Lacey…”

Lacey just grinned down at him, continuing to rock her hips until he grabbed the base of the condom and pulled out, leaving her right on the edge. His hands were soon back, and Lacey guided his fingers to just where she needed them. 

“Harder,” she gasped as he started to rub at her clit again. “So close, so close.”

Her climax came suddenly, warming her veins, and she felt her knees give way, collapsing down onto Sutherland’s chest in an ungainly heap. He just held her close until she eventually accepted that she was going to have to stop smothering him and rolled off and out of his embrace, as much as she wanted to stay and fall asleep there. There was silence for a long time, neither of them touching the other but both of them acutely aware of the presence in the bed beside them.

“So…” Lacey stared up at the ceiling, knowing that if she looked over at Sutherland then she’d just want to kiss him again and she’d put off the words that needed to be spoken. “What happens now?”

“Well, I guess that depends.” Sutherland rolled over and found her hand, interlacing his fingers with hers.

“On what?” She had to look at him now, glancing sideways to meet his dark eyes. They looked earnest, although she knew that you could never be sure with politicians, who were used to twisting words and bending truths. 

“On whether this was a one-time thing because we both liked each other and we were seizing the moment before we never saw each other again, or if we want it to be more than that.”

There was the definite implication that Sutherland would be ok with more than that. Lacey wasn’t sure what to think. She’d gone into this telling herself that whatever happened, it didn’t matter, because after today they would go back to their separate lives. Now that she was here and thinking about it more, and now that she’d had a first taste, so to speak, the harder it was for her to see this as a simple one-night stand. If that was what Sutherland wanted to keep it as, then she would be content with it, but now that the possibility had been mooted… 

“So, if, theoretically, we wanted it to be more than that?”

“Well, it’s a long time since I was last dating with any regularity, but I think the normal course of action would be to exchange phone numbers.”

Lacey had to laugh. “Are you sure that you should be giving out the Prime Ministerial phone number?”

“It’s my phone. Besides, being Prime Minister, it’s a lot easier for me to change my number if you start being weird.”

“True enough. But think about it the other way. I’m not sure how I’d feel about the Prime Minister having my number if he started being weird.”

“Shall we just agree not to be weird?”

Lacey laughed. “Yeah, ok. We won’t be weird. I mean, beginning a sort of relationship with the leader of the country is already pretty weird in itself. I have to admit, if you’d asked me two days ago where I would be now, this is definitely not what I would have said.”

“Me neither. It doesn’t feel quite real.” Sutherland paused, and his hand squeezed hers again beneath the covers. “This feels real. The circumstances are still something out of a melodrama, but you’re real.”

“Very real.”

It did feel real, and Lacey was surprised by that. She hadn’t expected to feel as positive and excited about the prospect of this brief dalliance going further. She certainly hadn’t expected it. Like Sutherland had said, it hadn’t really seemed real before, almost as if she was in a dream. Now though, lying here with him, safe in this old bed in an unfamiliar spare room, without politics and assassinations and journalists looming over them, it felt much more real, and if they could continue it for a while, then Lacey was up for seeing where it went. It would be difficult, she knew that, but that was life. 

Sutherland leaned in and kissed her again, letting go of her hand to cup her face, pushing her back over onto her back. Lacey welcomed him between her thighs again. She still had a while before she had to get home, after all, and even though this wasn’t necessarily a one-time thing, it made sense to get as much out of it as possible. 


	10. Chapter 10

Sutherland had really not anticipated how much paperwork came with nearly being assassinated and having the Head of the Civil Service arrested for said near-assassination. What he had hoped would be a fairly peaceful summer break had, overnight, turned into a complete frenzy, not helped at all by the fact they were trying to do their utmost to keep everything out of the papers. 

Naturally, despite Carrie’s most valiant efforts, this was completely impossible, and the red tops were going above and beyond when it came to conspiracy theories. Sutherland was extremely glad that it was the summer and he didn’t have to deal with quite as many public appearances, or anyone in the Commons wondering aloud to the Speaker if the Prime Minister was in a fit state to be running the country given that he was probably suffering some kind of psychological trauma as a result of nearly dying. On top of that, the delicate political situation that had led to him hosting the meetings at Chequers in the first place had still not gone away, and it would only become more acute as time went on. 

Sutherland leaned back in his chair and sighed. It felt very strange to be back in Chequers given what had happened the last time that he was here, and he wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about it. On the one hand, Sir Albert had been arrested and wasn’t around to make a second attempt on his life since the first one failed, but on the other hand, it was clear that he had not been working alone, and Sutherland still didn’t really know who he could trust. In a way, he felt safer down here at Chequers than he did back in Downing Street, because it was far more likely, given the phone conversation that Carrie had overheard, that Sir Albert’s co-conspirator was London-based. 

He glanced down at his phone, looking at his ongoing conversation with Lacey. They had been messaging each other fairly frequently over the last few weeks and had spoken a few times as well, talking about the day to day life of Downing Street and Carrie’s latest shenanigans, and how Lacey’s studies were going. She was on track to complete her doctorate on time and graduate in January, and Sutherland wondered how much of a stir it would cause if he were to go to the ceremony. Probably too much, but he would definitely send his congratulations.

Chatting with Lacey was always a breath of fresh air whenever things were getting out of hand. She would pull him out of the politics and into the wider world, reminding him that there was indeed a wider world out there that was affected by all the decisions that she was making. Sometimes, thinking about the bigger picture and trying to do the best for the entire country, he could lose sight of individuals.

And of course, there was the simple fact that she was Lacey, and he really liked her, and he enjoyed spending this time with her just because she made him happy. And, he liked to think, he made her happy. How they had managed to be so compatible despite being so vastly different was beyond him, but he was incredibly grateful for it. When he’d first gone into politics, he had let his personal life take a back seat, and when he had become Prime Minister, all thoughts of beginning a relationship had been parked firmly on one side - he had missed his chance and that was that. Now a great chance had been presented to him - in extraordinary circumstances, that was true - and he didn’t want to mess it up.

There was a soft knock on the door, and it startled Sutherland out of his reflections. He was still getting used to the layout of the new room, having decided that he really didn’t want to continue using the room that he had died in as his main office, and the door was in the wrong place according to his auditory memory.

“Come in.”

Carrie poked her head around the door. “How are you doing? Set the world to rights yet?”

Sutherland shook his head. “Of course not. The day I do that, I’ll instantly announce my retirement as I know I’ll never have it so good again. What about you?”

“Oh, I’ve still got plenty of things to be getting on with, not least of all getting to know all of your hugely increased security personnel. I definitely appreciate how seriously they’re taking all this, but it has played havoc with one of my cunning plans.” 

Sutherland raised an eyebrow. Carrie’s cunning plans ranged from rearranging all the potted plants in Downing Street to tricking obstinate MPs into voting for bills that needed votes. He glanced down at the paper in front of him and wondered how many they’d have to sweet talk to get this one to pass. He’d been working on the proposal as a pet project all summer, intending to present it when parliament reconvened, a new draft bill for changes to student loan interest rate caps. Lacey’s words during their time together had had an impact on him, and even if he never saw her again, he felt that trying to make her voice heard in the House would be a fitting way to thank her for everything she had done for him. 

“Anyway,” Carrie continued. “I was just checking that you’ll be all right if I clock off for the night. You know you can always call me if you need anything.”

Sutherland nodded. “I know. It’s just strange being back here. It’s as if nothing’s changed and everything has changed at the same time. I’ll only be partaking of hot beverages that I have prepared and that have not left my sight.”

“That’s my man.” Carrie crossed the room and patted his shoulder. “Anyway, I have a hot date with a local taxi driver to look forward to, so I’ll leave you to your brooding. Lighten up, it might never happen. And if you think about what’s already happened this summer, I’m pretty sure that you can survive anything that the opposition might throw at you.”

“Too soon, Carrie.”

“My apologies. Well, you enjoy your evening. I’m certainly going to enjoy mine, even if I’m slightly concerned that my mother might end up stalking me. Oh, by the way, I brought you a present.”

“I don’t know whether to be pleased or scared. Some of your presents are dubiously thought out at best, and I don’t think any of them could be opened in front of my mother.”

“Oh, this one definitely can’t be opened in front of your mother. I’m certain you’ll enjoy it though.” Carried winked and left him alone but a moment later, there was another tap on the door. 

“All right, what did you forget…” Sutherland trailed off as he looked up and saw that the person coming into the room was not Carrie, but Lacey.

“Surprise,” she said. “Carrie snuck me in.”

Sutherland looked down at his phone, at the last messages that had been exchanged between them only about fifteen minutes prior. She would already have been in the building at that point. 

Lacey’s smile faltered a little. “Are you… happy to see me? I mean, I can go away again…”

“No! I mean yes. Yes, I am very happy to see you, no, please don’t go away.” He stood up quickly, coming across the room and closing the door. “It’s just a bit of a shock, that’s all. It’s very good to see you.” He took her hand, making to lead her across to the sofa, but something made him stop, a ball of nerves. Despite their ongoing communication, this was the first time that he had seen Lacey in person since those fateful couple of days when the world was turned upside down. 

“I’ve missed you,” he admitted. “Is now the right time to tell you that I was seriously thinking about looking you up whilst I was down here again and asking if you wanted to go out somewhere?”

Lacey’s smile returned, although it did not quite meet her eyes. “Why didn’t you?”

“I was scared. Also, dating isn’t exactly the same kind of experience when you’re being shadowed by several security guards all the time. Even more security guards than usual thanks to recent adventures.”

Lacey laughed, and this time the humour did reach her eyes, lighting up her whole face. 

“Yes, I can see that would cause some problems. Would they sit at a different table or would it be a family affair?”

“You know, I don’t actually know what the etiquette is. I’ve never done it before.”

“Well, I’m happy to leave it as a mystery for now. I mean, we don’t need to go out to date, necessarily.” Lacey paused. “I was never really the dating type anyway; I don’t really know how I would go about it.”

“Yes. I haven’t done it for so long that I don’t really know how to go about it either.”

“Maybe we’re best off staying in and ordering takeaway. I happen to know a very friendly taxi driver who’d probably be happy to go and get it for us.”

Sutherland chuckled, finally chancing to take Lacey’s hand and lead her over to the sofa. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Carrie has plans with Ursula tonight and I don’t think that they involve food delivery.” Although, that said, Carrie had been all for encouraging his relationship with Lacey and had indeed been the one to get her into Chequers in the first place, so maybe she would be happy to help them on their way to becoming a proper couple. A rather odd couple, and one that the tabloids would no doubt get a great deal of mileage out of when they found out, but a couple, nonetheless. 

Lacey glanced over her shoulder at his desk as they crossed the room. “What did I interrupt?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you have a clear desk policy as the PM?”

“Ah, yes.” Sutherland rushed across to gather up the papers and shove them in his desk drawer, but not before Lacey had caught sight of his draft proposal. He plucked the sheet from her hand. 

“You took me seriously,” she said softly. 

“Yes. Your ideas were well thought out and whilst it was obvious that you were very impassioned about the topic, your arguments were coming from a place of reasonable thought and good logic rather than anger. You did most of the legwork, really, I just took everything that you said and put it into political terms.” He paused. “I can’t promise that it will get anywhere. The shadow chancellor’s probably already trying to shoot it down and he doesn’t even know that it exists yet, but at least it will bring the issue to the table and get people thinking about it.”

“I… I’m amazed. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Sutherland shrugged. He hadn’t wanted to make it seem like he was doing it just to gain favour with her, or to make her feel like she owed him something in return.

“I didn’t want you to feel obligated.”

Lacey laughed. “You know, for a politician, you really do keep surprising me with how human you are.”

“I shall take that as a compliment.”

“You should.”

He finished tidying the desk and they finally made it to the sofa, sitting down close together. It was an easy closeness, falling back into the strange familiarity that they’d shared at Mrs de Ville’s house, and it felt so right, despite their long separation. 

“So, I might be a bit presumptuous, but…” Lacey reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle of champagne. “I thought we might toast to our reunion. Since we’re not going out to a bar or anything. Also, it’s not actually champagne, it’s the only sparkling wine they had at the supermarket.”

“I’m sure that supermarket sparkling wine and champagne taste much the same when drunk out of coffee mugs, which are all I have in here at the moment.”

“Yeah, I don’t want you running off to find champagne flutes or I won’t see you again for about an hour, this place is a complete rabbit warren. I got lost about five times getting to this room and I had Carrie as a guide. You can’t get rid of me now. I’ll be here forever.”

Sutherland just slipped an arm around her as she put the bottle down on the floor, pulling her in for a long-awaited kiss. 

“You know, I think I could live with that.”


End file.
